Why MeetingMate doesn't send a bot to your meetings

Many AI meeting tools send a bot to your call as an extra participant, which records it and emails everyone a summary. MeetingMate doesn't. There is no extra tile in the participant grid and nothing to admit from the waiting room. Here's why.

A bot changes the room

When a name with "Notetaker" after it appears in a call, people notice. Some ask who invited it. Some get more careful about what they say. In a customer call or a sensitive 1:1, that shift can cost more than the notes are worth.

A bot also turns recording into a decision made for everyone by whoever's calendar it was attached to.

How MeetingMate listens instead

MeetingMate runs on your Mac and records two things there: the call audio playing on your computer, and your microphone, as separate tracks. That is how the transcript tags lines Me and Them. It works with any app: Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack or FaceTime. macOS asks once for Screen & System Audio Recording and Microphone permission.

The audio is transcribed on your computer with Whisper in roughly 20-second chunks, so a live transcript builds up during the meeting. The audio is never uploaded.

No bot doesn't mean not telling people

A bot is a loud way of announcing a recording. Removing it removes that signal, and recording quietly is not the answer. MeetingMate includes a short "let people know" notice to paste into the meeting chat at the start. Depending on where you and the other participants are, you may also have legal obligations around consent to recording; the notice makes those easier to meet, it doesn't replace them.

What you give up

• You need to be there. A bot can attend a meeting you skipped. MeetingMate is a notepad and works in meetings you're in.
• Voices are split only into Me and Them. With several people on the other end, they all appear as "Them"; MeetingMate does not yet tell individual remote voices apart. In a room sharing one microphone, it can't tell voices apart at all.
• It's one person's notes. Nothing is emailed to attendees automatically. Download the minutes as a Word document, read them, and send them yourself.

We think those are the right trade-offs. Your notes reflect what you thought was important. MeetingMate's job is to make them complete, not to become another participant.

The short version

No bot joins your call. MeetingMate records and transcribes on your computer, then turns what you jotted down into minutes. To see how that works, read How Minutes keeps your notes yours.