Local Meeting Notes with Whisper Transcription + Ollama Summaries (Gemma3n, LLaMA, Mistral) — Meetily AI

Introduction

Taking notes during meetings is one of those universal pain points. Most teams either assign someone to jot down minutes, or rely on cloud-based AI note takers like Otter, Fireflies, or Jamie. But these come with trade-offs:

• Your data lives on someone else’s servers.
• Subscription costs scale with team size.
• Integrations can break or require permissions you’d rather not grant.

Meetily was built to solve this problem differently: a self-hosted, open-source desktop app that records, transcribes, and summarizes your meetings completely offline. With the release of v0.0.5, Meetily has taken a big step forward in stability, deployment, and local AI model support.

What Is Meetily?

Meetily is an AI-powered meeting companion that you run locally on your own machine. Unlike SaaS tools that join your calls as bots or plugins, Meetily:

• Captures audio directly from your system output and microphone.
• Works with any platform: Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Discord, or even in-person recordings.
• No integrations required — no bots, browser extensions, or special permissions.
• Cross-platform: available on Windows, macOS, and Docker (with Linux support on the way).

In other words, Meetily is a standalone desktop app. Once installed, it just works — regardless of which conferencing software your team prefers.

Whisper for Local Transcription

At the heart of Meetily is Whisper, the speech recognition model from OpenAI. Instead of sending audio to a server for transcription, Meetily runs Whisper locally, turning your audio into accurate text right on your machine.

Benefits of local Whisper:

• Privacy-first: no audio leaves your computer.
• Faster feedback: transcription happens in real time or shortly after your call.
• Cost savings: no API usage fees.

This makes Meetily especially useful for professionals working with sensitive information — consulting, law, healthcare, or research.

Ollama Summaries: Your Own LLM on Your Machine

Once Whisper has transcribed the conversation, Meetily passes the text to your local Ollama instance for summarization. Ollama acts as a lightweight, local LLM runtime that lets you run advanced models with a simple command.

Supported Models

Meetily works seamlessly with Ollama-supported models, including:

• Gemma 3n — strong summarization capabilities with good performance.
• LLaMA (Meta) — popular general-purpose models.
• Mistral — efficient, lightweight models well-suited for fast local inference.

Because everything runs through Ollama:

• No API keys required (unless you want to connect external providers).
• Everything is local: your transcripts and summaries never leave your machine.
• Customizable: choose the model that fits your hardware and use case.

What’s New in v0.0.5

This release focuses on making Meetily easier to deploy and faster to use:

• Stable Docker support — run Meetily on x86_64 and ARM64 environments reliably.
• Native installers — Windows and macOS builds (with Homebrew tap support for Mac users).
• Streamlined setup — simplified dependency management and installation.
• Backend optimizations — faster Whisper transcription and smoother Ollama summarization pipelines.

These updates make Meetily friendlier for both developers and end users.

Installation Guide (Aligned with Release Notes)

macOS — Install via Homebrew (Recommended)

brew tap zackriya-solutions/meetily
brew install --cask meetily

• Launch Meetily from Applications or Spotlight.
• On first run, grant microphone and screen recording access.
• Start the backend server if required:

  meetily-server --language en --model medium

• Upgrading from v0.0.4? Run:

  brew update
  brew upgrade --cask meetily
  brew upgrade meetily-backend

Data is automatically migrated to /opt/homebrew/var/meetily/meeting_minutes.db.

Windows — Installer

Step 1: Install the Frontend Application

1. Download the installer:

   • Go to Latest Releases
   • Look for and download the file ending with x64-setup.exe (e.g., meetily-frontend_0.0.5_x64-setup.exe)

2. Prepare the installer:

   • Navigate to your Downloads folder
   • Right-click the downloaded .exe file → Properties
   • At the bottom, check the Unblock checkbox → Click OK
   • This prevents Windows security warnings during installation

3. Run the installation:

   • Double-click the installer to launch it
   • If Windows shows a security warning:
     • Click More info → Run anyway, OR
     • Follow any permission dialog prompts
   • Follow the installation wizard steps
   • The app will be installed and available on your desktop/Start menu

Step 2: Install and Start the Backend

1. Download the backend:

   • From the same releases page
   • Download the backend zip file (e.g., meetily_backend.zip)
   • Extract the zip to a folder like C:\meetily_backend\

2. Prepare backend files:

   • Open PowerShell (search for it in Start menu)
   • Navigate to your extracted backend folder:

    cd C:\meetily_backend
   

• Unblock all files (Windows security requirement):
  

   Get-ChildItem -Path . -Recurse | Unblock-File
  

1. Start the backend services:

   .\start_with_output.ps1

• This script will:
  • Guide you through Whisper model selection (recommended: base or medium)
  • Ask for language preference (default: English)
  • Download the selected model automatically
  • Start both Whisper server (port 8178) and Meeting app (port 5167)

What happens during startup:

• Model Selection: Choose from tiny (fastest, basic accuracy) to large (slowest, best accuracy)
• Language Setup: Select your preferred language for transcription
• Auto-download: Selected models are downloaded automatically (~150MB to 1.5GB depending on model)
• Service Launch: Both transcription and meeting services start automatically

✅ Success Verification:

1. Check services are running:
   • Open browser and visit http://localhost:8178 (should show Whisper API interface)
   • Visit http://localhost:5167/docs (should show Meeting app API documentation)
2. Test the application:
   • Launch Meetily from desktop/Start menu
   • Grant microphone permissions when prompted
   • You should see the main interface ready to record meetings

Docker — Cross-Platform

For server environments or those who prefer containers:

Best for: Developers, testing, or when you want automatic dependency management
Performance Note: 20-30% slower than native installation

Quick Start (5-10 minutes)

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/Zackriya-Solutions/meeting-minutes
cd meeting-minutes/backend

# Windows (PowerShell)
.\build-docker.ps1 cpu
.\run-docker.ps1 start -Interactive

# macOS/Linux (Bash)
./build-docker.sh cpu
./run-docker.sh start --interactive

What you get:

• Automatic dependency management
• No need to install Python, CMake, or build tools
• Consistent environment across all platforms
• Interactive model selection
• Both services running: http://localhost:8178 and http://localhost:5167

Configuring Ollama

1. Install Ollama: https://ollama.com/
2. Pull models:

   ollama pull gemma:latest
   ollama pull llama:latest
   ollama pull mistral:latest

1. In Meetily → Settings → LLM Provider, set:

• Provider: Ollama (local)
• Base URL: http://localhost:11434
• Model: e.g. gemma:latest

Getting Started

1. Launch Meetily and select System Audio + Microphone.
2. Start recording → Whisper transcribes locally.
3. At the end of the meeting, Ollama summarizes into action items and key notes.
4. Review meeting history, stored locally on your machine.

Community & Support

Meetily is built in the open, and we welcome feedback, contributions, and bug reports.

• 🐛 Report issues / feature requests: GitHub Issues
• 💬 Join discussions & get support: GitHub Discussions
• 🌐 Community chat: Discord
• 📦 Latest release: Meetily v0.0.5
• 📖 Docs & homepage: meetily.zackriya.com

Conclusion

With Whisper for transcription and Ollama for local LLM summaries, Meetily offers a fast, private, and fully self-hosted alternative to cloud meeting assistants. Version 0.0.5 brings Docker stability, native installers, and smoother pipelines — making it easier than ever to run AI meeting notes entirely on your own hardware.

If you’ve been waiting for a way to keep your meeting data private, flexible, and under your control, now’s the time to give Meetily a try.

👉 Download Meetily v0.0.5