SMF·GRANOLA
Can a prompt replace Granola?
Meeting notes — meeting transcription + AI notes
Exhibit tracking slip
Verdict
Recording audio, transcribing it locally with Whisper, and asking an LLM to structure the result into a summary and action items is a genuine one-sitting build — one of the cleanest yes entries in the catalogue. What the paid product mainly adds on top is cross-device sync, a mobile app, and automatic calendar joins.
Exhibit A — The prompt
Received on30.07.2026Build a local meeting-notes tool: a simple start/stop recording control that captures system and microphone audio together. On stop, transcribe the recording with whisper.cpp running locally (fully offline, free), or optionally via a hosted Whisper API if a key is present in the environment for faster turnaround. Send the transcript to an LLM (Anthropic or OpenAI, whichever key is configured) with a prompt that returns a short summary, any decisions made, and action items with owners where mentioned. Save the result to a dated Markdown file — summary at the top, full transcript below a divider — with the audio file kept alongside it. Everything stays local except the API calls you explicitly choose to make; with whisper.cpp and a local model, the whole loop can run fully offline.
Do not build cross-device sync, a mobile app, or automatic calendar integration to auto-join meetings — those need infrastructure and platform access well beyond a personal recording tool.Opening prefills the prompt — press enter to run it.
Exhibit B — What you lose
- B.1 sync across devices
- B.2 the mobile app
- B.3 automatic calendar-linked joining of meetings
- B.4 someone else's servers and support
Prior art
Exhibit C — Why people still pay: polish/sync/collaboration
People pay because it's always on, tied into their calendar and work calls without any setup, and trustworthy enough that meeting history never gets lost.
Questions
Can I import my existing Granola notes?
Granola lets you export notes, and since this build also writes plain Markdown files, moving them into the same folder structure is a straightforward copy, not a real migration.
Will it work on my phone?
No — this is a desktop tool tied to capturing your computer's own audio during a call. There's no mobile version and no sync to read notes elsewhere.
What does it cost to run?
Nothing if you stay fully local with whisper.cpp and a local model. Using a hosted Whisper API or a cloud LLM for summaries costs a small amount per meeting, typically well under a dollar.
What's the one thing that doesn't survive the rebuild?
Joining meetings automatically. Granola links to your calendar and captures calls without you remembering to hit record; here, forgetting to start the recording means the meeting simply isn't captured.
Related tools
Receipt