HumlaNotes on keeping meeting notes private.
Local, open-source, no bot in the call. Written by the person building it.
OpenAI Data Retention Policy (2026): What They Keep, and For How Long
What OpenAI actually retains from ChatGPT and from the API — 30-day abuse logs, the endpoints with no retention at all, training defaults, Zero Data Retention, and the New York Times court order that ended in September 2025. Verified against OpenAI's own docs, July 2026.
How Humla does RAG locally: FTS5, embeddings, and RRF on your Mac
A walk through Humla's local retrieval stack: paragraph-aware chunking, standalone SQLite FTS5, a content-addressed embedding cache, and reciprocal rank fusion — no vector database, no server, no network hop unless you asked for one.
Best Open-Source Meeting Notetakers (2026)
Seven open-source tools for transcribing and summarising meetings, from full no-bot notetakers to self-hosted transcription servers. Licences, what each one actually does, and the self-hosting story behind each.
6 Best Fireflies Alternatives in 2026
Fireflies is a capable cloud notetaker, but it emails your recap to everyone on the invite by default and keeps every meeting on its servers. Six honest alternatives — local, open-source, cheaper, or quieter — and who each one is really for.
Chat With Your Meeting History — Private, Cited, and Offline
Humla just shipped a chat pane on every note. Ask a question across your meeting history and get a cited answer — fully offline with local models via Ollama, or with your own OpenAI key. Free and open source.
The Best No-Bot Meeting Notetakers (2026)
Meeting notetakers that never send a bot into your call — and the catch most lists miss: bot-free doesn't always mean private. An honest guide to the tools that skip the bot, and which also keep your audio off the cloud.
6 Best Granola Alternatives in 2026
Granola nailed the no-bot AI notepad, but it's cloud-only and priced per seat. Six honest alternatives — local, open-source, cheaper, or bundled — and who each one is really for.
6 Best Otter.ai Alternatives in 2026
Otter is a solid cloud notetaker, but it's pricey, sales-heavy, and everything lives in its cloud. Six honest alternatives — local, open-source, cheaper, or bot-free — and who each one is really for.
The Best Local AI Meeting Notetakers for Mac (2026)
The Mac apps that transcribe and summarise meetings entirely on your device — no bot, no cloud upload, open source. An honest comparison of Humla, Meetily, and anarlog.
How Humla runs Whisper on-device on Apple Silicon
How Humla does offline, on-device meeting transcription on Mac: Whisper on the Metal GPU, local diarization, and the few things that still need a network.
Local-first vs cloud meeting notes: what actually leaves your Mac
A step-by-step trace of what happens to your meeting recordings with a cloud AI notetaker vs a local-first one — and why 'private' should be checkable.
Is it legal to record client calls?
Recording client calls is usually legal — but only with consent. A plain-English look at US one- and all-party rules, GDPR, Norway, and the Otter.ai lawsuit.
How to take client meeting notes without a bot joining the call
A practical workflow for consultants to record client calls on a Mac and take meeting notes without a bot joining the call — consent, tools, and privacy.
AI meeting summaries, free and private
The summary is the part of a meeting you actually reuse — but most tools make you upload the whole call to get one. Here's how to get good AI meeting summaries that stay on your Mac.
Free, open-source AI meeting notes for Mac
Most AI notetakers are neither free nor open — you rent them per seat and your meetings live on their servers. Humla is a free, open-source alternative that runs on your Mac.