What a good AI note taker should do
The job of an AI note taker isn't to record everything — it's to give you back the decisions and next steps without you typing through the call. The best ones capture across whatever app you're in, structure the result, and keep it searchable.
- Capture meetings, calls, and notes in one place
- Turn talk into decisions and action items, not a wall of text
- Make every past conversation searchable
- Respect your privacy — where audio lives, and whether it trains models
How Nod is different
Nod captures your Mac's own audio, so it never joins the call as a participant — no bot, nothing in the attendee list. Its clearest difference is no stored audio: sound is held in memory about five seconds to transcribe, then discarded.
Capture is local on your Mac; transcription isn't. Each audio segment is sent through a European proxy to a hosted transcription service and discarded the instant the text returns, under Zero Data Retention and with no model training. No audio is stored at either end. Only the transcript and summary are saved, encrypted at rest in the EU (AWS eu-west-1). See the security page.
What you get from every conversation
Each capture becomes a structured recap — topics, decisions, action items with owners and due dates, and open questions — plus a full transcript. 'Ask Nod' then searches across your whole history, so you can ask a question and get an answer pulled from every meeting. For the bigger picture, see meeting notes without a bot.
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI note taker?
An AI note taker captures a conversation and automatically turns it into structured notes — typically a summary with decisions and action items, plus a searchable transcript — so you don't have to type during the meeting.Does Nod join the meeting as a bot?
No. Nod captures your Mac's system audio without joining the call, so no extra participant appears in the attendee list. You should still get consent where recording law requires it.Is there a free AI note taker?
Yes — Nod has a free 14-day trial, no credit card. See the free AI note taker page for what's included.