Independent consultants
Client call notes a consultant owns, on a call where the client never sees a bot join
Ghosty Notes records discovery calls, workshops and advisory sessions from your Mac’s own audio, transcribes them on the device, and writes the notes to a folder you choose.
Ghosty Notes runs on macOS on a Mac with Apple Silicon, because transcription runs on the chip itself. Intel Macs are not supported.
no notetaker in this list
what the other side sees while you record
An independent consultant sells judgement, and the raw material arrives in conversation. The discovery call where the client describes the problem in their own words. The workshop where three stakeholders disagree and the real constraint finally surfaces. The check-in where scope quietly expands. Everything you deliver later is built on what was said in those rooms, and most of it is reconstructed from shorthand written while you were also facilitating.
Ghosty Notes records from your Mac’s system audio. Nothing joins the meeting, so there is no fourth participant in a three-person client call. Speech becomes text using a model running on your machine, and your audio never leaves the device on any plan. The transcript and summary are written as markdown files into a folder you choose, so they can live in the client folder next to the proposal and the deck.
Because they are files, they are searchable by tools you already use. The MCP server lets Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor query your call history locally: what this client said about their reporting line on the first call, or the exact wording of a scope boundary you agreed in March.
The advisory firms that ban recording, ours included
If you have ever run an inquiry session with a research and advisory firm, you have met the policy directly. Forrester publishes guidelines that bar recording of inquiry sessions and analyst briefings. Where recording is permitted at all, it has to be made on Forrester’s own platform. Recordings are deleted after 60 days. And using the recordings, the notes or the transcripts to train an AI tool is prohibited outright.
That policy bans Ghosty Notes. Not a competitor, not cloud tools in general, ours. A local tool on your laptop is still a recording made off their platform, and the fact that the audio never leaves your Mac is not an exception the policy contains. We would rather write that sentence ourselves than have you discover it in a briefing and conclude the rest of this page was written with the same care. If a client, an analyst or a research firm has said do not record, the answer is do not record, and no architecture makes that different.
What a local tool actually changes is narrower, and it is a question consultants get asked constantly: where does this go? A procurement team, an in-house counsel, or a nervous operations director wants to know which company ends up holding a recording of their internal discussion, what it does with it, whether it trains on it, and how long it is kept. When the recording, the transcription and the notes all happen on the machine in front of you, that conversation ends quickly, because there is no vendor in the chain to describe. You are not asking them to trust a policy page belonging to a business they have never heard of.
The second thing it changes is smaller and, in practice, the one consultants mention first. You do not have to explain a fourth attendee. There is no moment where "Otter.ai Notetaker" appears in the participant list of a call the client scheduled, and no client wondering who invited it, whether it is one of your staff, or why they were not asked. You still ask permission. You just ask it as a question about you, in your own words, rather than defending a piece of software that walked into the room ahead of you.
- Forrester published recording guidelines
- Bar recording of inquiry sessions and analyst briefings, require any permitted recording to be made on Forrester’s own platform, delete recordings after 60 days, and prohibit using recordings, notes or transcripts to train an AI tool.
- Loughborough University data-privacy notice, 6 February 2026
- States that tools "such as otter.ai and MeetGeek introduce significant risks, especially when personal or sensitive data is involved", and advises staff to primarily use the transcription features already in Microsoft Word and Teams.
- In re Otter.AI Privacy Litigation, 5:25-cv-06911 (N.D. Cal.)
- Filed 15 August 2025. Cited only as a live case on the record. No view taken on its merits.
How it fits a consulting week
The discovery call, captured in their words
Ask at the top of the call, then record. The value is not the summary, it is the phrasing: the words the client uses for their own problem are the words your proposal should use back. Writing from a transcript rather than from memory is the difference between sounding like you listened and sounding like a template.
Facilitate the workshop instead of scribing it
The session where you most need a record is the one where you can least afford to be typing. Record the workshop, stay in the room, and read the disagreement back afterwards. The output lands as a dated markdown file in that client’s folder, ready to become the summary you send.
Send the recap while it is still worth something
A follow-up note landing two hours after the call is worth more than a polished one on Thursday. Cut the summary to the decisions and the actions, and send it. The transcript stays behind as the version you check when someone remembers the deadline differently.
Search the account before the next conversation
Point Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor at the MCP server and ask across your own history: what this client committed to last quarter, every call where a stakeholder raised budget, the objection you have heard from four clients in one sector and should probably answer in the proposal template.
What consultants raise before they install anything
- My client will not let me record. Does local processing help?
- No. If a client has said do not record, that is the end of it, and this product gives you no way around it. Consent is your job: we do not obtain it, we play no disclosure, and no feature of ours substitutes for asking. Local processing answers a different objection, about where the recording goes and who else ends up holding it. Those two arrive in the same sentence, which is why they get confused. Only one of them is ours to solve.
- I already use Otter or Fathom and my clients have never complained.
- Then the switching cost may not be worth it, and that is a legitimate conclusion. The reasons consultants do move are specific: a procurement process asking which third parties receive recordings, sector work where the client is a research firm or a regulated business with a policy against it, or not wanting a bot in the participant list of a call you are paid to lead. If none of those describe your practice, your current tool is fine.
- I write notes by hand and I think better that way.
- Keep doing it. Hand notes make you listen differently and leave no artefact anyone can ask for later. What they cost you is the exact quotation, which matters most in two places: the proposal, where the client’s own language is the most persuasive thing available, and the scope disagreement, where the gap between what you remember agreeing and what was agreed is the whole argument. Plenty of people record and still write on a pad.
- Can my associate and I share one library of client calls?
- No. There is no team plan, no shared library, no admin console and no seat management. Each licence is one person recording to their own folder. You can buy two licences and put the folder in a shared drive like any other files, but no feature gives one person a view across another person’s meetings. If a joint searchable practice library is what you are buying, this is not it.
- What happens to the recordings if I stop paying?
- Nothing happens to them. The transcripts and summaries are markdown files in your folder and do not live behind a login. If the subscription lapses you lose Pro features, not the record of six years of client work. That follows from the architecture rather than from a promise in our terms.
- Do I need to tell the client if the recording never leaves my laptop?
- Yes. Consent rules turn on where the participants are, not on where the file ends up, and some US states require every party to consent. Local storage is not a workaround for a recording law and we will not present it as one. It is a straightforward question you ask at the start of the call.
Against what independent consultants actually use
| Ghosty Notes | Alternatives | |
|---|---|---|
| What the client sees | Nothing joins. Recording is from system audio | Otter, Fireflies and Fathom join as a participant |
| Where processing happens | On your Mac. Audio never leaves the device | Uploaded and processed on the vendor’s servers |
| "Which company receives this recording?" | None in local mode. No transmission to describe | A named vendor, plus their subprocessors |
| A client whose policy forbids recording | Also not permitted. A local tool is still a recording | Not permitted |
| Completeness versus a pad | Full transcript, held by you | Full transcript, held by the vendor |
| Where the notes live | Markdown files in the client folder you chose | In the vendor’s web app |
| When you stop paying | The files stay. They were never behind a login | Access to the archive usually ends |
Questions from consulting practices
- If I switch on Pro’s hosted AI models, what leaves my Mac?
- The transcript text, and only when you choose to switch it on. Recording and transcription always run on your Mac and the audio never leaves the device, on any plan. Summaries and chat run locally by default. Pro’s hosted models and the fast cross-meeting chat send the transcript text to that service to be processed, never the audio. If a client has asked that nothing be sent anywhere, stay in local mode and nothing is.
- What do I need to run it?
- A Mac with Apple Silicon. The transcription model runs on the chip in your machine, so an Intel Mac cannot run it. There is no Windows build and no web version.
- Does it work with Zoom, Teams, Google Meet and phone calls?
- All of them, because it integrates with none of them. It records the audio your Mac is playing and your microphone, so the platform is irrelevant. That covers a dial-in on speaker and a meeting held in a room.
- Can I keep each client’s notes in that client’s folder?
- Yes. You choose the folder the markdown files are written to, so the transcript sits alongside the proposal and the deck. Files move, rename and back up like anything else on your disk.
- Will it label who was speaking in a workshop?
- Speaker identification is a Pro feature and it runs on your Mac. On the free plan the transcript is not labelled by speaker, which is usually fine for a two-person call and much less useful for a six-person workshop.
- Is the app in English?
- The interface is English. The transcript and summary follow the language spoken in the meeting, and the on-device model handles a range of languages, but menus and settings are not translated.
- Can I use it on paid client work without upgrading?
- Yes. The free plan does on-device transcription with no cap on meetings, includes the MCP server, and detects meetings from your local Apple Calendar. Pro at $5.00 a month or $54.00 a year adds Google and Outlook calendar sync, hosted AI models, fast cross-meeting chat, Obsidian sync and speaker identification.
- How do I share a recap with a client?
- You send it, the way you send anything else. There is no share link, no client portal and no viewer account, because no server holds your notes. The summary is text in a file, so it goes in an email or a document.
Write the proposal from what the client actually said
Free on a Mac with Apple Silicon, no cap on meetings. Pro is $5.00 a month or $54.00 a year.
Record your next discovery call