I built an open source meeting recorder that runs on your laptop and drops any note it can't cite

Description and use

SayBack is a local desktop app that records meetings, transcribes audio, summarizes content, and links each note to its source timestamp, preserving privacy and avoiding cloud dependencies.

Problem

Meeting tools often record audio but discard visual context and require cloud accounts, making it hard to recall why decisions were made.

Outcome

SayBack provides a fully local meeting recorder that produces source‑linked notes, preserving privacy and enabling easy navigation back to the original content.

Workflow

• Select microphone, window or screen, and system audio sources
• Record meeting
• Transcribe audio with timestamps using whisper.cpp
• Summarize transcript into key points, decisions, action items and questions using a 4B model and screenshots
• Generate note items with source IDs
• Validate source IDs against existing transcript blocks
• Drop items with no valid sources
• Organize meetings into folders and enable full‑text search
• Click a note to jump to the corresponding video timestamp

Evidence

After a meeting, I usually remember the decision. I rarely remember why we made it.

Source

SayBack: an open source desktop app that records the conversation and what was shared, then writes notes where every point links back to the exact moment it came from.

Source

In local mode, nothing leaves the computer. SayBack even refuses Ollama models that are really cloud models behind a local alias, before any data is sent.

Source

One invented citation removes one item, not the whole summary. If nothing survives, the analysis fails with an error instead of showing you unsupported notes.

Source