Before you start, check both audio permissions are granted. See permissions. Recording without them produces a silent file, and you will not know until it is over.

Try this on something low stakes first. Talk to yourself for a minute, or record a podcast playing on your Mac.

Record

1. Select New meeting, or open the event if you have a calendar connected.
2. Select Record.
3. Talk.

No bot joins anything. Nobody in the call sees a new participant, because there is no participant to see. Ghosty Notes listens to your Mac’s own audio.

Type while it listens

The note area is yours during the recording. Type rough notes, half sentences, anything.

Add a line like this and it becomes a real action item:

- [ ] Send the pricing deck to Sarah

Your agent can list those later, and tick them off. See the MCP tool reference.

Stop

Select Stop. Two things happen:

1. Transcription. The audio is turned into text on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded.
2. Notes. If you have an AI model set up, it writes a summary from the transcript. See AI models for notes.

Transcription is not instant. A long meeting takes a while, and the very first one can take longer still if the model was still downloading during setup. Both are normal.

What you end up with

• Your notes - exactly what you typed, untouched.
• The transcript - the full text, split by speaker.
• A summary - if an AI model is configured.
• The audio - kept, so you can play back any moment.

Speakers appear as “Speaker 1”, “Speaker 2” and so on. Putting real names to them is a Pro feature. See speaker identification.

All of it is written to plain files on your disk as you go. See notes and files.

Now do the useful bit

Record two or three real meetings, then connect your coding agent and ask it what you decided.

If the recording is silent

Almost always the system audio permission, and almost always because the app was not restarted after granting it. See no audio in the recording.