TalkNotes 🎙️

Record conference talks, transcribe them locally in near-real-time with whisper.cpp, take rich markdown notes and slide photos alongside, then generate an AI summary at the end. Built to survive conference wifi: everything runs on your laptop, only the summary step calls Claude.

Features

• Live transcription — audio recorded in 15s segments, each transcribed as it lands (~20s behind the speaker), streamed to the browser over SSE
• Sessions — one per talk: create, rename, delete, pause/resume, browse history
• Live mic meter — see that audio is actually being captured
• WYSIWYG notes — Toast UI editor (headings, bold, colors…), stored as plain notes.md, autosaved, exportable
• Photos — drag-drop / paste on laptop, or open the LAN URL on your phone and snap slides straight into the session
• AI summary — transcript + your notes → structured markdown summary via claude -p (your notes are weighted as "what mattered"); saved per session and reopened instantly, with Regenerate / Save .md / Publish to Notion actions
• Responsive UI — React + Tailwind + shadcn/ui, works from a phone

Requirements

• macOS (uses avfoundation for mic capture)
• Homebrew: brew install ffmpeg whisper-cpp node
• Claude Code CLI on PATH (for summaries)
• A whisper model in models/ — recommended:

  mkdir -p models
  curl -L -o models/ggml-large-v3-turbo-q5_0.bin \
    https://huggingface.co/ggerganov/whisper.cpp/resolve/main/ggml-large-v3-turbo-q5_0.bin

  The server picks the best model present (see MODEL_PREFERENCE in app/server.js).

Run

npm install
npm --prefix app install
npm --prefix app/ui install
npm run build          # build the UI once
npm start              # http://localhost:3033 (+ LAN URL for your phone)

Grant microphone access to your terminal app when macOS asks (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone).

Develop

npm start              # API server on :3033
npm run dev            # Vite dev server with HMR, proxies /api → :3033
npm run lint           # ESLint (UI)
npm run format         # Prettier (repo-wide)

Pre-commit hooks (husky): lint-staged runs Prettier + ESLint; commit messages must follow Conventional Commits (enforced by commitlint).

How it works

mic ──ffmpeg──▶ sessions/<id>/audio/seg-NNNN.wav   (16 kHz mono, 15s segments)
                      │ fs.watch: segment complete
                      ▼
               whisper-cli (local, Metal)           --prompt = title + previous chunk
                      │
                      ▼
               transcript.jsonl ──SSE──▶ browser (live transcript + mic level)
                      │
                      ▼  "Summarize"
               claude -p (transcript + notes.md) ──▶ summary.md

Each session is a plain folder under sessions/ — audio, transcript.jsonl, notes.md, photos/, summary.md. Easy to back up, grep, or post-process.

./retranscribe.sh <session-id> re-runs transcription on stored audio (e.g. after upgrading the model) — the original transcript is kept as a .bak.

Configuration (env vars)

Variable	Default	Description
PORT	3033	HTTP port
AUDIO_DEVICE	0	avfoundation audio device index
SEGMENT_SECONDS	15	segment length = transcription cadence

List devices: ffmpeg -f avfoundation -list_devices true -i ""

Publish to Notion (optional)

The "Publish to Notion" button only appears in the summary dialog once both env vars below are set — without them the feature is hidden entirely.

Creating a connection requires workspace owner rights in Notion. On a work workspace where you're a regular member, either ask an owner to create it for you, or use a personal workspace.

1. Create a connection at notion.so/my-integrations → New connection → auth method Access token (not OAuth) → select workspace → copy the ntn_… secret.
2. In Notion, open the page that should hold the summaries → ⋯ menu → Connections → add your integration.
3. Copy the page id (the 32-char hex part of the page URL) and create app/.env:

   NOTION_TOKEN=ntn_xxx
   NOTION_PARENT_PAGE_ID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   

4. Restart the server. "Publish to Notion" in the summary dialog creates a child page titled after the session.

Privacy

Recordings, transcripts, notes and photos never leave your machine — sessions/ and models/ are gitignored. The only network call is the optional summary step through your Claude account.