Bot-free by design
AI meeting notes
without a bot
joining your call.
Reline records system audio and your mic locally on macOS, Windows, and Linux. No "Reline has joined the meeting." No third-party participant. Just speaker-attributed transcripts and citation-backed AI notes — for your whole team.
Why teams move to Reline
Why bot-free, on-device recording wins
Every other AI notepad made you choose: ship a bot that crashes your client's call as an uninvited participant, or stay a solo tool with no team primitives. We thought there was a third option. Reline captures meetings on-device — the recording lives on the machine of one participant, the way a screen recording does — and still gives you the workspace, permissions, and collaboration that bots historically only offered by being a SaaS recorder of your live conversation. This page is the canonical explainer for how that works, why bot-free wins for teams selling to security-conscious buyers, and the honest cases where a bot is still the right call.
Optics — no "Reline has joined the meeting." A bot is your prospect's first impression and a brand-awareness moment they never opted into. On-device recording adds no participant to the grid, so nothing changes about how the room behaves.
Security review you can actually pass — a meeting bot is a third-party SaaS recording your live call. Reline captures on the host machine first, so there's no extra participant for your buyer's IT or InfoSec team to vet before the deal.
Works on every platform because we capture system audio — Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and even browser-based phone systems all just play through your speakers. The meeting platform never has to support us.
No platform locks — Zoom Phone, certain Teams tenants, and many enterprise Google Workspaces actively block third-party bot recorders. On-device capture sidesteps that entirely because nothing tries to join.
Privacy by default — your audio and transcripts are never used to train third-party models. The raw audio lives on your disk first, then syncs to encrypted cloud storage, with private-by-default access you control — every share is an explicit grant.
Consent stays between you and the room — because the recording isn't sitting on a recorder vendor's servers as a precondition, consent is a yours-and-theirs question, not a vendor question. (We still recommend telling counterparties — it's good practice and the law in two-party-consent jurisdictions.)
No awkwardness tax — when a bot is on the participant list, people stop joking and stop pushing back, and the meeting gets performative. Bot-free recording keeps the conversation real.
Built for teams, not just one laptop — bot-free doesn't mean solo. Notes sync to a shared workspace with five-level granular per-note and per-folder permissions, real-time collaborative editing, and RAG chat across everything.
What "on-device" actually means
On-device meeting capture records two audio streams on the host machine: system audio — everything you hear through your speakers — and your microphone — your voice. The two streams are mixed and the recording is captured on your computer the way a screen recording of your laptop is. Nothing joins the meeting itself. The mechanism is the documented operating-system audio API: on macOS, Apple's ScreenCaptureKit exposes system audio with the user's explicit permission, granted once the first time, and Windows uses WASAPI loopback. It's inherently a single-participant operation — only the device running the capture has the audio. Nobody else in the meeting does, and the meeting platform never sees a Reline participant. Audio and transcripts are never used to train third-party models.
Why a bot costs you the deal
"[Vendor] has joined the meeting" is a sentence your prospect reads at the worst possible moment — the start of your pitch. It's an uninvited brand-awareness moment and a quiet vote against your product being thoughtful. Worse, every meeting bot is a third-party SaaS recorder of your live conversation, which means your buyer's security team now has a vendor to review before they can say yes. In regulated industries — finance, healthcare, defense, legal — third-party recorders are increasingly disallowed outright. And when the bot is on the participant grid, the room changes: people stop joking, stop pushing back, and the meeting gets more performative. Bot-free recording removes all of that. The room behaves exactly as if no tool were present, because from the meeting's point of view, none is.
How Reline records without a bot
Reline runs as a desktop app on macOS, Windows, and Linux. When you start a recording, it taps the operating system's documented audio API — ScreenCaptureKit on macOS, WASAPI loopback on Windows — to capture the meeting's system audio plus your microphone, locally. You grant permission once. From then on, Reline captures whatever the machine plays, regardless of which meeting app you're in. The audio is transcribed with speaker-attributed diarization, then an AI summary is generated with citations that link every claim back to the exact transcript segment that justifies it — so nothing is hallucinated and everything is checkable. From there you can run reusable Lenses (AI templates with four output formats), roll up a whole folder of meetings with multi-note Lenses, edit in a Notion-grade real-time collaborative editor, ask questions across your notes with RAG chat, and push the output to Slack, Linear, or Notion. Calendar sync with Google and Microsoft keeps it all attached to the right meeting.
When a bot is still the right call — our honest take
We won't pretend bot-free is the answer for every workflow. There is one thing a bot can do that on-device fundamentally can't: record a meeting you aren't attending. Bot-free recording requires your laptop to be in the call, because the audio is captured from your machine. For most teams that's the correct constraint — you shouldn't be capturing meetings you didn't attend — but if your job genuinely requires sending an assistant to listen on your behalf, a bot-based tool is your only option. Likewise, if your meeting platform supports official cloud recording with API access and your security team has already signed off on that specific path, a bot can occasionally be the path of least resistance. For everyone else — and especially anyone selling into security-conscious buyers — bot-free is the better default. That's the wedge Reline is built on.
Frequently asked
Bot-free, answered
- How do I record a meeting without a bot joining the call?
- Use an on-device recorder like Reline. It runs as a desktop app on macOS, Windows, and Linux and captures the meeting's system audio plus your microphone locally, through the operating system's documented audio API (ScreenCaptureKit on macOS, WASAPI loopback on Windows). You grant permission once and start recording — no bot is added to the participant list, and the meeting platform never sees a third-party participant.
- Will my client know I'm recording?
- That's up to you. Reline doesn't announce itself to the other side and adds no participant to the call, so there's no automatic "X has joined the meeting" notice. That said, recording-consent rules vary by jurisdiction — two-party-consent states in the US require disclosure — and we recommend telling your counterparties regardless. Most people appreciate the heads-up, and it's simply good practice.
- Does it work on Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams?
- Yes. Because Reline records what your computer plays through the speakers plus what your microphone hears, the meeting platform is irrelevant — Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams all work the same way. The same applies to browser-based phone systems like Aircall, Dialpad, and RingCentral. There's nothing for the platform to support or block, because nothing tries to join.
- Is my data private and kept on-device?
- The recording happens on-device first — the raw audio lives on the machine that captured it, then syncs to encrypted cloud storage so you can reach your notes from other devices and share them with your team. Your audio and transcripts are never used to train third-party models. Enterprise plans add SSO, an audit log, a DPA, an SLA, and policy locks for stricter governance.
- What's the difference between a bot-free notetaker and a regular AI notetaker?
- A regular AI notetaker sends a bot to join your meeting as a participant — a third-party SaaS recorder visible on the grid, which your buyer's IT team has to review and which some platforms block. A bot-free notetaker like Reline captures the meeting on your own device, so no participant is added, no platform support is required, and the conversation stays exactly as it would be with no tool present. You still get speaker-attributed transcripts and citation-backed AI summaries — just without the bot.
- Can I record meetings I'm not attending without a bot?
- No — and this is the one honest limitation of bot-free recording. Because the audio is captured from your own machine, your laptop has to be in the call. If your workflow genuinely requires recording meetings you can't attend, a bot-based tool is your only option. For everyone who attends their own meetings, on-device recording is the better default: same notes, no bot.
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