Anarlog

Anarlog is a meeting notepad built around one idea: your notes belong on your device, not in someone else's system. It captures system audio without adding a bot to your call, so participants never see an uninvited attendee in the room. You jot rough shorthand during the meeting, and afterward Anarlog turns those fragments into a structured, editable summary.

It's a direct open-source alternative to Granola for people who don't want cloud-first tools handling their meeting data.

How the core workflow runs:

• Rough notes in, clean summary out. You write fragments like "new dash - urgnet" and the tool produces organized, attributed meeting notes you can edit and keep.
• No bot joins the call. Audio is captured from your device's system audio, invisible to other participants.
• Files on disk. Audio, transcripts, and notes are stored as files you control, not locked in a proprietary database.
• Flexible AI path. Run fully offline with on-device models, or bring your own API key when you prefer a cloud model. You're not tied to a single provider.

For people comparing options, tools like Meetily and Minutes take a similar local-first approach, but Anarlog's combination of bot-free capture, editable post-meeting summaries, and choice of AI backend is its distinguishing shape.

The GPL codebase means you can inspect exactly what runs on your machine. Notes survive as plain files, independent of any service or interface that might change. It works for individual contributors, executives at privacy-conscious organizations, or anyone who's uncomfortable with a third-party bot sitting in sensitive calls.