Claude
Cursor
Char vs. Meetily: Which Is Better?
Char and Meetily are both local-first, bot-free, open-source AI meeting tools. This comparison explains what sets them apart and which one fits your workflow.
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AI daily notes
that remember and act
Char records your meetings without bots, pulls action items from your emails, and builds a daily note with everything you need to do.
You review it, tick what's done, and hand off the rest to AI agents like Claude or Cursor.
Trusted by people in:
We believe in the power of notetaking, not notetakers. Meetings should be moments of presence, not passive attendance. 
AI changes it. Instead of scribbling notes, it gives us the power to be present.
But we give it control over our meetings. What happens with all our calls and chats then? Services sunset 
constantly, models change, progress is unstoppable.
We believe in owning your data, doesn't matter where it lives. More important is what you bring from every meeting, every call, every chat.
Char
exists to preserve what makes us human: conversations that spark ideas, collaborations that move work forward. We build tools that amplify human agency, not replace it.
No ghost bots. No silent note lurkers. Just people, thinking 
together.
Char
John Jeong, Yujong Lee
This is how Char gets your day done
Screen recording
Record your day
Char remembers your timeline and helps you get any information you want: emails, tasks, conversations.
— Ask Charlie anything, about day, contacts, meetings.
10:00 – 11:30 AM
Finances & Admin
Checked Mercury banking and PostHog analytics, then shifted to tax and payroll admin.
- •Pulled contractor documents from Gusto
- •Drafted W-9 request emails from Mail
11:50 AM – 12:25 PM
Writing "Moats Suck"
Drafted an essay in Obsidian, then cross-published to LinkedIn and X.
- •~600–780 words
- •Shared in #general and #uchar
1:00 – 3:30 PM
Coding — Char v0.0.8
Updated Char and configured transcription settings.
- •Added created_at timestamp display
- •Explored Soniqo Docs for speech enhancement
3:30 – 4:30 PM
Discord & Team
Active in the CEO's Office channel, directing the AI agent.
- •Reviewed SQLite migration work
- •Triaged GitHub issue #5047
10:00 – 11:30 AM
Finances & Admin
Checked Mercury banking and PostHog analytics, then shifted to tax and payroll admin.
- •Pulled contractor documents from Gusto
- •Drafted W-9 request emails from Mail
11:50 AM – 12:25 PM
Writing "Moats Suck"
Drafted an essay in Obsidian, then cross-published to LinkedIn and X.
- •~600–780 words
- •Shared in #general and #uchar
1:00 – 3:30 PM
Coding — Char v0.0.8
Updated Char and configured transcription settings.
- •Added created_at timestamp display
- •Explored Soniqo Docs for speech enhancement
3:30 – 4:30 PM
Discord & Team
Active in the CEO's Office channel, directing the AI agent.
- •Reviewed SQLite migration work
- •Triaged GitHub issue #5047
Collect meetings
Summarise and transcribe meetings
Char combines your meeting notes with transcripts to create a perfect summary.
Learn more about meeting notetakerWeekly Team Sync
42:17Char
Mobile UI Update and API Adjustments
- Sarah presented the new mobile UI update, which includes a streamlined navigation bar and improved button placements for better accessibility.
- Ben confirmed that API adjustments are needed to support dynamic UI changes, particularly for fetching personalized user data more efficiently.
New Dashboard – Urgent Priority
- Alice emphasized that the new analytics dashboard must be prioritized due to increasing stakeholder demand.
AI chat
Ask questions, execute tasks
Chat with Charlie to find decisions, pull context, and trigger the follow-ups that usually slip — all grounded in your notes.
— Hand off work to AI agents like Claude or Cursor.
Ask about your notes...
Send
Private by design
Data always stays on your device
Your privacy is our priority. We don't use it for training or collecting any of your meeting content.
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Bring Your Own Key or use local models
Char supports all major speech-to-text providers and have the best local models build in
1-1 w/ Janice3 participants
No bots on calls. Hidden during screen share.
Char captures system audio, not bothers people on the call. Works everywhere.
Screen activityProcessed locally
Screen recording stays on your device
We record and analyse your screen locally. It never goes to the cloud.
Build for every conversation
One source of truth for every conversation you run
Investor calls, customer discovery, team 1:1s, board updates. Char captures it all with zero overhead and keeps the context you need to act.
Multiple agendasInvestor & customer memoryCross-context handoffAgent-ready workflowsYour data, your rules
Learn moreWhat people are sayingChar was formerly Hyprnote. Read about the rename.
I'm actually very pro meeting recording and ai summarization. But I'm not ok with bots joining as fake humans accomplish this. It's a meeting between you and me. Not you and me and some startup's viral growth strategy. Granola is great. Gemini does this well in Google Meet. Char is great and fully local. But use them with consent. My tweet is about how ridiculous and self important it looks when you show up to a meeting with random bots as entourage.
Char has been on my radar since their time in YC S25 as “that local-first meeting notes thing,” and I finally took a closer look today. It immediately hit a nerve I’ve had with AI note tools for years. I love the idea of getting help with meetings. I really don’t love bots joining every Zoom call or my audio being streamed to some mystery server “for quality purposes”. @getcharnotes leans into that tension in a pretty honest way. It calls itself a local-first AI notepad for private meetings, and the “private” bit is not just a tagline. There are no meeting bots and no calendar guests. It just listens directly to the audio going in and out of your computer, gives you a realtime transcript, and lets you stay in the conversation instead of turning into a court reporter. You still have a simple notepad to jot quick memos during the call. Those act more like hints than homework. After the meeting, Char can use your memos to shape a personalized summary, but that part is optional. If you forget to take notes altogether, it can still generate a recap from the transcript. The tech stack is pretty nice if you are into that sort of thing. TypeScript and React on the UI, Rust and Tauri for the desktop app. The cool part is what that enables. You can run the whole thing offline with LM Studio or Ollama. No Wi‑Fi, no outbound requests. That makes it genuinely interesting for teams that care a lot about compliance or even air‑gapped environments. And if you do want cloud models, it does the “bring your own LLM” thing with Gemini, Claude, Azure‑hosted GPT, etc., so it can fit into whatever your company’s approved stack is. If you have been waiting for an AI meeting assistant that behaves like a real desktop app and respects the fact that you might not want to ship your raw meeting audio to the cloud, Char is worth a look
@getcharnotes is by far one of my favorite AI secret weapons as of late. It's an AI notetaking tool, and there's a ton, but it's the best open source one that respects privacy & isn't a walled garden like others No affiliation, just love their product & hope they succeed
Really liking char.com by @computeless. Open access to my data and a GPL codebase!
I'm actually very pro meeting recording and ai summarization. But I'm not ok with bots joining as fake humans accomplish this. It's a meeting between you and me. Not you and me and some startup's viral growth strategy. Granola is great. Gemini does this well in Google Meet. Char is great and fully local. But use them with consent. My tweet is about how ridiculous and self important it looks when you show up to a meeting with random bots as entourage.
Really liking char.com by @computeless. Open access to my data and a GPL codebase!
Char has been on my radar since their time in YC S25 as “that local-first meeting notes thing,” and I finally took a closer look today. It immediately hit a nerve I’ve had with AI note tools for years. I love the idea of getting help with meetings. I really don’t love bots joining every Zoom call or my audio being streamed to some mystery server “for quality purposes”. @getcharnotes leans into that tension in a pretty honest way. It calls itself a local-first AI notepad for private meetings, and the “private” bit is not just a tagline. There are no meeting bots and no calendar guests. It just listens directly to the audio going in and out of your computer, gives you a realtime transcript, and lets you stay in the conversation instead of turning into a court reporter. You still have a simple notepad to jot quick memos during the call. Those act more like hints than homework. After the meeting, Char can use your memos to shape a personalized summary, but that part is optional. If you forget to take notes altogether, it can still generate a recap from the transcript. The tech stack is pretty nice if you are into that sort of thing. TypeScript and React on the UI, Rust and Tauri for the desktop app. The cool part is what that enables. You can run the whole thing offline with LM Studio or Ollama. No Wi‑Fi, no outbound requests. That makes it genuinely interesting for teams that care a lot about compliance or even air‑gapped environments. And if you do want cloud models, it does the “bring your own LLM” thing with Gemini, Claude, Azure‑hosted GPT, etc., so it can fit into whatever your company’s approved stack is. If you have been waiting for an AI meeting assistant that behaves like a real desktop app and respects the fact that you might not want to ship your raw meeting audio to the cloud, Char is worth a look
@getcharnotes is by far one of my favorite AI secret weapons as of late. It's an AI notetaking tool, and there's a ton, but it's the best open source one that respects privacy & isn't a walled garden like others No affiliation, just love their product & hope they succeed
I love the flexibility that @tryhyprnote gives me to integrate personal notes with AI summaries. I can quickly jot down important points during the meeting without getting distracted, then trust that the AI will capture them in full detail for review afterwards.
Open source
Char values privacy and community, so it's been transparent from day one.
Stars
8.2k
Forks
582
Frequently Asked Questions
What languages does Char support?
45+ languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, and more.
Can I import existing recordings?
Yes. Upload audio files or transcripts to turn them into searchable, summarized notes.
Does Char train AI models on my data?
No. Char does not use your recordings, transcripts, or notes to train AI models. When using cloud providers, your data is processed according to their privacy policies, but Char itself never collects or uses your data for training.
Is Char safe?
Char doesn't store your conversations. Every meeting audio, transcript, and note is a file on your computer. You decide if your data ever leaves your device.
How is Char different from other AI note-takers?
Plain markdown files instead of proprietary databases. System audio capture instead of meeting bots. Your choice of AI provider instead of vendor lock-in. Open source instead of a black box.
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