In simple English
This app records your voice, meetings, and calls right on your computer. It turns everything you say into plain text files without sending your audio to the cloud. You can open these files in any text editor or let your coding assistant search them. Your data stays in a folder on your hard drive, so you keep total control over it. It costs nothing to use, but you need some free disk space and a working microphone.
What it is
Minutes is an open-source tool that records audio and transcribes it on your device into Markdown files. It also connects to AI assistants through the Model Context Protocol (MCP, a standard way for AI tools to talk to local software and data sources) so your coding agents can search your past meeting notes.
What it is good for
Solo builders and developers who want searchable meeting notes without paying for a cloud service or trusting third-party servers with their audio recordings.
- All audio capture and transcription runs locally on your machine.
- Saves everything as plain Markdown files with YAML frontmatter, making it easy to read in Obsidian.
- Connects directly to Claude Code, Cursor, and other MCP clients to answer questions about past conversations.
- Requires compiling or installing via Homebrew, Cargo, or Node packages.
- Local speech transcription uses computer memory and processing power.
- Managing command-line tools and desktop apps takes extra maintenance work.
Granola
Obsidian
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brew install --cask silverstein/tap/minutes claude mcp add minutes -- npx -y minutes-mcp