macOS · Windows · Linux · Open source
Meeting notes
without the bot.
Steno records the call from your computer's own audio, transcribes and summarises it on-device, and writes plain Markdown you own. Nobody sees a notetaker join. Bring your own model. Fork the whole thing.
$ brew tap nicolaischmid/tap && brew install --cask steno- Capturesystem audio + mic, two lanes
- TranscribeParakeet TDT v3 · on-device
- Diarise3 speakers · 2 known voices
- Summariseyour model · text only
- WriteMarkdown · VTT · JSON
Record without joining. Process without uploading.
When another app opens your microphone, a small prompt asks whether to record. The other side of the call comes from the system audio, your side from the mic, kept as two lanes so Steno always knows who is “me” and who is “them”. No bot joins. Nobody is told.
- Zoom, Teams, Meet, FaceTime, Slack, phone calls, in person
- On-device transcription with Parakeet or Whisper
- Remembers voices: name a speaker once
- German, English and the Denglish in between
Bring your own model
Steno doesn't resell tokens. Transcription and speaker recognition run on your machine; the summary, the task list and the Denglish cleanup go to whatever model you point it at. A base URL and a key, nothing else.
- No account. No subscription. No quota caps.
- Fully offline with a local model.
- Only transcript text ever leaves the machine, and only to the endpoint you chose.
There is no Steno server.
Every row on the right is a design constraint, not a policy page. Any code path that sends bytes over the network is a destination you configured, or the text-only model client. Audio has no way out.
- Works offline with a local model
- Audio retention is a setting, with a per-meeting override
- Plain files you can grep, sync and back up yourself
- Meeting audio
- A folder you choose. Deleted per your retention setting.
- Transcript text
- The model endpoint you configured, and only there.
- Voice embeddings
- A local SQLite database. Never uploaded.
- Summary and tasks
- Markdown, VTT and JSON on your disk. Steno never syncs.
- Phone recordings
- Your phone to your computer over the local network. TLS, pinned keys.
If you don't like something, fork it.
- Change the templates. Summaries follow Markdown templates you can edit or add.
- Add a destination. Write meetings to whatever your notes live in.
- Ship your own build. Sign it yourself or install it from source.
Your meetings deserve better than a bot.
Steno is free, open source and runs on your machine. Install it, point it at a model, and the next call writes its own notes.
- macOSApple Silicon · signed and notarized
- Windowsx64 · arm64
- LinuxAppImage · x64