AI meeting notes, without a bot.
Fluent takes AI meeting notes without joining the call: it records in the room on your iPhone or a paired pendant, so there's no bot in the participant list.
Most meeting-notes tools join the call as a participant. They add a little bot to the attendee list and record the meeting from the inside.
Fluent doesn't.
Fluent captures the room. Through your Limitless or Omi pendant, or through your phone. The meeting happens. The notes are waiting when it's done. Nothing about the meeting changed because Fluent was there.
Phone on the table. Notes after.
Tap record in Fluent, put your iPhone down and listen. The notes arrive a few minutes after you stop.
How meeting-notes tools work
Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, tl;dv
Send a bot into Zoom, Meet or Teams by default, where it appears in the participant list. Each also has a desktop app that records without one.
Granola
No bot: records your computer's audio on calls; its iPhone and Android apps record in person.
Fluent
Captures the audio in the room through your pendant or your iPhone. Never appears in the participant list. Never joins the call.
What the notes look like
Not a wall of transcript. A meeting you can scan in sixty seconds, then drill into when something snags.
A two-paragraph summary
Written the way a good chief of staff would write it. What the meeting was about, what got decided, what didn't.
The action items, by speaker
Not "follow up on Q3" floating in the void — "Karim said he'd send the revised forecast by Friday." Spoken by whom, owed to whom.
Speaker-attributed transcript
Diarized and timestamped. Skip the parts you already remember. Find the exact line you misquoted.
The meetings Fluent is built for
Where the bot can't follow. Which is most of where the important stuff actually happens.
In-person 1:1
Walking meeting
Lunch with a client
Investor pitch in their office
Conference hallway conversation
Zoom / Meet / Teams call
By design, Fluent captures the room, not the call stream — it never joins as a bot. On a remote call it captures your side and anything audible on your speakers.
The bot question, answered
When a bot joins your call, your conversation lives on a third-party server that wasn't part of the room. The other people in the meeting may not know it's there. The bot's vendor may train on your audio. The recording exists in a system you don't fully control.
When Fluent captures through your pendant or iPhone, the audio lives in your Fluent account — encrypted at rest, sharable only by you, never used to train models.
Per-user encryption and on-device processing are on the roadmap. We won't list them on this page until they ship.
Leaving one of these tools? Each has a sourced comparison of the alternatives: Otter, Fathom, Fireflies, tl;dv and Granola. Still choosing? How to choose an AI meeting notes app in 2026 compares bots, phone apps and pendants.
Questions about meeting notes without a bot
What does 'AI meeting notes without a bot' mean?
Most AI notetakers get the audio by sending a bot into your video call, where it shows up in the participant list. Without a bot, the audio is captured where you are instead: on a paired pendant or your iPhone's microphone. Nothing joins the call and nothing appears in the participant list.
Which AI meeting-notes tools join the call as a bot?
As of October 8, 2026 (Fathom re-checked October 14): Otter, Fireflies, Fathom and tl;dv send a bot into Zoom, Meet or Teams by default, and each also offers a desktop app that records without one (Fathom's bot-free mode is Mac only, for now). Granola never sends a bot; it records your computer's audio. Fluent never joins a call.
Can Fluent take notes for in-person meetings?
Yes. Fluent records the room, on a Limitless or Omi pendant or your iPhone, so it covers in-person 1:1s, walking meetings, client lunches and hallway conversations: the meetings a bot has no call to join.
Does Fluent join Zoom, Google Meet or Teams calls?
No. Fluent never joins a video call and does not record the call stream. On a remote call it captures the audio in your room: your side, and anything audible on your speakers.
Where does the recording live?
In your own Fluent account, encrypted at rest, shared only when you share it, and never used to train models.
Related help: Meeting templates · User interview template · Consultant debrief template · Record from your iPhone · Free tool: find the action items in a transcript