trnscrb 0.1.0

Offline meeting transcription for macOS — auto-detects meetings, transcribes locally, saves to Claude Desktop via MCP

trnscrb

Lightweight, fully offline meeting transcription for Claude Desktop. A native macOS alternative to Granola — no cloud, no subscription.

What it does

• Auto-detects meetings (Google Meet, Zoom, Slack Huddle, Teams, and more)
• Records your meeting audio (mic + system audio via BlackHole)
• Transcribes locally with Whisper (small model, Apple Silicon Metal)
• Identifies speakers with pyannote diarization
• Reads your calendar to auto-name meetings
• Saves every transcript as a plain .txt file in ~/meeting-notes/
• Exposes everything to Claude Desktop via MCP so Claude can search, read, and enrich your notes

Requirements

• macOS 13+
• Python 3.11+
• Apple Silicon recommended (M1/M2/M3) for fast local transcription

Install

# One-liner bootstrap:
bash <(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ajayrmk/trnscrb/main/install.sh)

# Or if already cloned:
trnscrb install

The installer checks and optionally installs:

• BlackHole 2ch audio driver (via Homebrew)
• Python packages (faster-whisper, pyannote, rumps, sounddevice, mcp, …)
• HuggingFace token (for pyannote speaker diarization)
• Whisper small model (~500 MB, downloaded once)
• Claude Desktop MCP config entry
• Launch-at-login agent

Usage

Menu bar app

trnscrb start

A mic icon appears in your menu bar with Auto-transcribe on by default — it will automatically start and stop transcribing when it detects a meeting.

Or manually: click → Start Transcribing / Stop Transcribing.

From Claude Desktop

Once the MCP server is configured (done by trnscrb install), Claude has access to:

Tool	What it does
start_recording	Begin capturing audio
stop_recording	Stop, transcribe, save
recording_status	Check progress
get_last_transcript	Most recent transcript
list_transcripts	All saved meetings
get_transcript	Full text of one meeting
get_calendar_context	Current calendar event
enrich_transcript	Summary + action items via Claude API

CLI

trnscrb list               # list all transcripts
trnscrb show <id>          # print a transcript
trnscrb enrich <id>        # run Claude LLM pass (needs ANTHROPIC_API_KEY)
trnscrb mic-status         # live mic activity monitor (debug)
trnscrb devices            # list audio input devices

System audio (BlackHole setup)

After installing BlackHole:

1. Open Audio MIDI Setup (Spotlight → "Audio MIDI Setup")
2. Click + → Create Multi-Output Device
3. Check both BlackHole 2ch and MacBook Pro Speakers
4. Go to System Settings → Sound → Output → select the Multi-Output Device

Transcript format

Meeting: Weekly Standup
Date:    2024-01-15 10:00
Duration:23:14

============================================================

[SPEAKER_00]
  00:12  Good morning everyone, let's get started.

[SPEAKER_01]
  00:18  Morning! I finished the auth PR yesterday.

After running trnscrb enrich <id>, speaker labels are replaced with inferred names and a summary + action items block is appended.

Privacy

All audio processing happens on your device. No data leaves your machine except:

• If you run enrich, the transcript text is sent to Claude API (Anthropic)
• Calendar access uses AppleScript locally — no network calls

License

MIT