Record everything. Share nothing.
A macOS app that transcribes your meetings into Markdown files on your machine. No bot joins your call. No one on the other end knows it's running. Your AI tools read the files directly.
What you can do
No one knows it's there
The app window is hidden from screen share by default. There's no bot joining the call, no calendar invite, no awkward "this meeting is being recorded" banner. Just you and your Mac.
Give your AI full access
Every transcript is a Markdown file in a folder on your Mac. Claude, Cursor, whatever you use - if it reads files, it can search your entire meeting history. Your filesystem is the API.
Get context mid-call
Point it at a folder of notes and it pulls in what's relevant while you talk. Research docs, customer briefs, competitive intel. Right when you need it, without you asking.
Never miss a conversation
OpenOats detects when you join Zoom, Teams, or Slack and nudges you to start recording. Every call gets captured. Every standup, every client call, every quick sync that turned into a decision.
Speak any language
Transcribes 30+ languages. English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Arabic, Polish, Korean, Hindi - and it auto-detects what's being spoken. No configuration. Just talk.
Use any AI you want
OpenRouter for Claude or GPT. Ollama if you want everything local. Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint if you're running your own. The speech-to-text engine is swappable too - when something better comes along, drop it in.
Pay nothing
Free and open source. MIT licensed. No account, no subscription, no "free tier" that's actually a trial. Run everything locally with Ollama and it costs nothing. Use cloud models through OpenRouter and you're looking at a few dollars a month.
Everything stays on your Mac
Transcription runs locally, which means it works offline, on planes, and without waiting for a server. Audio never leaves your machine. Not because of a policy. Because there's no server to send it to.
Common questions
"How does it compare to Granola?"
Similar polish, fundamentally different architecture. Granola stores your data in their cloud and gives you access through their API. OpenOats stores your data as Markdown files on your machine. Any tool that reads files can read your meetings. No tokens, no rate limits.
"Is local transcription any good?"
The default speech model handles 25 European languages with auto-detection. For broader coverage, the Qwen3 engine adds 30+ languages including CJK and Arabic. Both run entirely on your Mac. The quality is solid and the engines are swappable, so when something better ships, you can drop it in.
"Do I need to be technical?"
No. Download the app, grant mic access, hit record. It works out of the box. If you want to tinker later - swap models, change output format, build automations on top - everything is open and configurable. But you don't have to.
"Both sides of the call?"
Yes. It captures your mic and system audio at the same time - both sides of the conversation, one transcript. Works without any extra setup.
Why we built this
Cloud transcription tools lock your data behind APIs, authentication, and someone else's rate limits. You're paying for the privilege of restricted access to your own conversations.
Want your AI agent to search last month's meetings? Hope your tool's API lets you. Want to feed transcripts to Claude? Export a PDF and copy-paste like it's 2019.
We put Markdown files in a folder. That's the whole trick.
Incumbents can't copy this without destroying their business model. Their revenue depends on being the middleman between you and your data. We don't have a revenue model to protect. That gap is permanent.
APIs have rate limits. Your filesystem doesn't.