Meeting notes for engineering teams
Listenr turns design reviews and incident calls into transcripts on your own disk. A command-line tool and a local MCP server read them, so your shell, your scripts and Claude can answer what was decided and why.
Your meetings from a shell
The listenr binary lists, shows, searches and exports from the local library. Reads work signed out and offline.
Claude can read the transcripts
listenr mcp gives Claude Desktop or Claude Code read-only tools over your meetings. Free on every plan.
Pasted chat reaches the notes
On Google Meet and Zoom desktop, links and error messages pasted into the meeting chat go to the notes model with the transcript.
Every action, scriptable
Every command in the app is also a CLI verb and an MCP tool, with the same rules and the same confirmation for destructive actions.
Listenr gives engineering teams meeting notes they can query. It records design reviews and incident calls from your Mac with no bot, transcribes them on-device, and stores everything in a SQLite library on your disk. The listenr command-line tool and a local MCP server read that library, free on every plan and offline, so the reasoning behind a decision is something you can search instead of something you have to remember.
What the meeting chat adds
On a technical call, much of the content is in the chat: the stack trace, the dashboard link, the one-line repro. Listenr reads the meeting chat on Google Meet through its browser extension, and on the Zoom desktop app when you switch on its Accessibility reader. That chat goes into the notes prompt in full, alongside the transcript and your typed notes. Images you attach to your notes, such as a whiteboard photo, go to models that accept images. Teams and other apps contribute no chat.
Participant email addresses are not sent. The full prompt contents are the same for every notes provider.
Reading meetings from a terminal
listenr list --since 7d --platform googleMeet --has-notes
listenr search "retry budget" --since 30d
listenr show 8f3a --transcript
listenr export 8f3a --output meeting.md
A meeting id is a full UUID or any unique prefix of at least four characters. Exit codes are stable for scripting: 0 ok, 1 error, 3 app required but not running under --no-launch, 4 refused by availability, 5 finish the step in Listenr, 6 confirmation required (pass --yes), 64 usage. Secrets are never passed as arguments: listenr secrets set <name> --stdin reads them from standard input.
The CLI is read-only by default. Every app command is also a verb, from record start to notes regenerate, and destructive ones ask for confirmation. A command line for agents covers the design.
Letting an assistant read your meetings
listenr mcp is a local MCP server over stdio. With no flags it exposes seven read-only tools: list_meetings, get_meeting, get_transcript, search_meetings, list_contacts, get_logs and get_status.
claude mcp add listenr -- /absolute/path/to/listenr mcp
Then ask what the team decided about the retry budget, and the answer comes from the review where it was decided. --allow control adds the app’s commands as tools, including destructive ones, which require an explicit confirmation flag. --allow settings adds setting and secret writes. Treat these as coarse groups, not a fine-grained permission model. The local server reads only the database on your Mac, so the app must have run at least once. On Pro, a hosted MCP connector also makes meetings you have shared or uploaded readable from claude.ai and ChatGPT.
A terminal UI
listenr tui opens a terminal interface built on the same command registry as the app, so a command added to the app is available there without extra work. Meetings without leaving the terminal shows it in use.
When the built-in recap is the better choice
If your company runs entirely on Microsoft Teams, Teams’ own intelligent recap is the shorter path: nobody installs anything, it covers people who are not on a Mac, and Microsoft knows exactly who spoke. It needs a Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, and an administrator has to enable transcription. Listenr names speakers on Teams calls too, but it runs on macOS 15 or later with Apple Silicon and records only the Mac in front of you. The built-in assistants comparison goes into detail.
Common questions
Is there a CLI for meeting transcripts on Mac?
Yes. Listenr ships a listenr command-line tool on every plan, including free. It lists, shows, searches and exports meetings from the local library without opening the app, and every app command is also a CLI verb. It is read-only by default, destructive verbs ask for confirmation, and most commands support --json.
Can Claude read my meeting transcripts?
Yes, through Listenr’s local MCP server. Run listenr mcp as a stdio server in Claude Desktop or Claude Code and it can list, search and read meetings, transcripts and contacts. It is read-only unless you start it with --allow control or --allow settings, and it reads only the database on your Mac.
Does the Listenr CLI work when the app is not running?
Library reads such as list, show, search and export run directly against the local database. Commands that need the app start it in the background with no window, or exit with code 3 if you pass --no-launch. A command refused because it is not available right now exits with code 4 and names the reason.
Can I put a design decision record into a repo?
Yes. listenr export writes any meeting to a Markdown file, and the Obsidian connector writes notes as local Markdown automatically. Meeting ids accept any unique prefix of at least four characters, so scripts can stay short.
Is there a terminal UI?
Yes. listenr tui opens Listenr’s terminal interface, and running listenr with no arguments in a terminal does the same. It reads the same command registry as the app.
Install it before your next call.
Recording, transcription and notes from a model on your Mac are free. macOS 15 or later, Apple Silicon.