Built a local meeting recorder, no bot joins the call. Looking for a few people who live in meetings to test it (free lifetime license)
I'm Moritz, I'be been working as freelance software developer for the last couple of years. I've recently been busybuilding Autorec, a desktop app that records your meetings locally. No bot joins the call, nothing gets uploaded to a cloud, and the recordings and transcripts stay on your machine.
Quick backstory: Freelancing means a lot of calls. Sales calls with potential clients, often several rounds before anything is signed, then scoping calls, then regular project calls once things are running. At some point I started recording my calls using obs. It began as a sales thing, rewatching my own conversations to see what I did well and where I fumbled, but it turned out to be way more useful than that. Being able to go back and find that one detail a client mentioned three weeks ago is super useful. I'm also kind of ADHD, so when I'd zone out mid-call while a client was talking, having a record saved me more than once.
So I hacked together sothe first version of what is now autorec: just some scripts to transcribe the recordings, plus a little web ui running on my machine to search the transcripts, generate summaries, and jump straight to the spot in the video where a topic came up. Somewhere while building that, I though that other people might want this too.
While there are things like Otter, which I also used for some time, I never liked the tools that join your meeting as a bot. There's an extra attendee sitting in the participant list, and people behave a little differently when they notice it. The conversation changes. And the big one for me: I sign NDAs with clients, and a third-party bot just shouldn't be in that room.
I bought the domain in autumn 2025 and then procrastinated on it for six months before actually committing this year and building it into a proper app.
The short version of what it does: it sits in your menu bar or system tray and notices when you join a call. It records the meeting window (not your whole screen), transcribes it locally with Whisper, and can write a summary using whatever AI that has an openai compatible api endpoint at including local/ self-hosted. You don't start it, stop it, or rename anything.
It works, but I have one gap. I've been my own main test user, and I don't sit in nearly as many meetings as some of you do. I want to know how it holds up for someone who's on calls all day.
So I'm looking for a few beta testers, just a handful of people I'll pick and actually talk to. I'm especially interested in power users and people running an agency or consultancy, anyone juggling multiple clients who knows the pain I started from.
What I'm after:
- You're in a lot of video meetings (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, or anything else).
- You'll actually use it for a few weeks and tell me what's annoying, what breaks, and what's missing.
- You're up for giving an honest quote at the end, but only if you'd genuinely recommend it.
What you get:
- A free lifetime license. Not just this version, but every future major version too. Autorec currently costs €20 per major version.
- Direct access to me as the developer. You tell me something's broken or missing, I fix it. No ticket queue, no "we'll pass that along."
- Real influence on the roadmap. Features you need get priority. You're not filling out a feedback form that goes into a backlog — you're shaping what gets built next.
- First-hand support. If something doesn't work on your setup, I'll debug it with you directly.
Platforms: it runs on Linux and Windows today. macOS is in the works, so if you're on a Mac, still reach out and I'll bring you in the moment the build is ready.
Fair warning: it's a paid app from a solo developer. Not an open-source project, not a VC-funded thing with a support team behind it. You'd be testing something one person builds and maintains.
If that sounds like you, comment with roughly how many meetings you sit through in a week and which platform you're on, or email me at [email protected]. I'll reach out to a handful of you this week.
Nice that nothing leaves the machine.
That is the right call for client calls. The gap that is easy to miss is one layer over from privacy.
It is consent to record. Not where the file is stored. A good number of US states need everyone on the call to agree first.
California and Pennsylvania and Washington are all-party consent.
Your client can be in one even when you are not. Nothing on the site speaks to that yet.
A short consent prompt before recording would close it.
For beta, I’d separate “records correctly” from “saves me later.” A heavy-meeting user might forgive one rough edge if search pulls up the exact client quote fast, so I’d ask testers to log one moment per week where Autorec changed an outcome: caught a missed ask, prevented a follow-up mistake, or shortened prep for the next call.
"No bot joins the call" is the whole product and I think you're underselling it. The NDA/behavior-change angle is real, but the deeper win is that a bot is a visible third party people have to trust — recording the window locally means there's simply no one to trust. "Private by construction" beats "we promise we're private" every time, especially with the privacy-conscious crowd.
I build local-first software too, and the one move that's paid off is making that claim verifiable rather than asserted: tell people exactly what does and doesn't leave the machine, and let the technical ones confirm it (no network calls, or a self-host toggle they can watch). "Whisper runs locally, nothing leaves your machine" is great copy — if you can show how someone checks it, the privacy folks will evangelize it for you. On pricing, €20 per major version for a tool with no server to fund feels right; a subscription would quietly contradict the privacy pitch anyway. Clean wedge — good luck with the beta.
What stood out to me wasn't the recording itself.
It was how the product seems to have become useful for reasons that are quite different from the reason you started building it.
That's usually where things get interesting.
Not because any of them are wrong.
Because they don't always point toward the same product.