AI meeting notetaker

Tana now offers a fully integrated AI meeting notetaker as part of the desktop experience. You can use it to transcribe meetings, generate summaries, and link notes directly to your work - without needing to add a bot in the call.

Tana now offers a fully integrated AI meeting notetaker as part of the desktop experience. You can use it to transcribe meetings, generate summaries, and link notes directly to your work - without needing to install a plugin or add a bot.

The meeting notetaker works for both calls and in-person meetings by recording system audio, and can also be used for lectures, interviews, and other audio sources. The feature is available on both Mac and Windows through the Tana desktop app and supports over 60 languages with automatic language detection.

How to set it up

1. Open the configuration for your meeting supertag

  • You can use an existing tag (e.g. #meeting) or create a new one by typing # followed by your tag name anywhere in Tana.
  • You can set up the meeting notetaker on as many supertags as you want.

2. Enable meeting notetaker on a supertag

  • Toggle Audio-enabled tag on under the “AI and commands” section.
  • Turn on Include system audio to include audio played by your computer, for example other voices in online meetings.
  • Turn on Output as transcript if you want to transcribe with speaker separation and timestamps (stored in the note's source material).

This will automatically add the “Text processing agent” command with its default configuration.

See here for further customization of the text processing agent.

Enabling these options will make a Mic button appear on the supertag:

When you open a tagged meeting, you'll see the mic button below the title:

Start note taking

You can start a transcription in several ways:

  • Click the microphone button on any note tagged with an audio-enabled supertag.
  • Click the desktop notification if Tana detects a meeting or you've synced your Google Calendar to Tana.
  • Use the command line with Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K), choose “Start meeting with...”, and select the supertag you want to use (all audio-enabled tags will show).

When meeting transcription starts you’ll see a floating recording menu, and a recording indicator in the sidebar. This gives you quick controls to pause for privacy, or end the meeting and start post-processing. Clicking the recording indicator will open the meeting note in Tana.

Transcript view

You'll see a Transcribing... button on the meeting that you can click to open and see the live transcription in source material. This button will also be available when you pause or stop the transcription so you can revisit the transcription at any time.

Tana AI chat is available on all notes. To chat with a meeting note:
- Press space on an empty line inside the meeting
- Or click ✨ Ask AI about this content in the top right

Re-transcribe from audio file

If real-time transcription stops due to network issues or vendor outages, you can retranscribe from the captured audio file using the Retranscribe from recordings command available in context menu on right-click or through the command line.

How to enable it?

Click on the user icon > Tana Labs > Transcript backup audio recording. All your transcriptions will now automatically capture back audio, so you can re-transcribe if you experience problems with network or language output.

How to re-transcribe

In the right-click/context menu on a node containing audio recordings, you'll see these options:

View recordings - will open the audio recordings in a new panel

Re-transcribe from recordings - starts a new re-transcription (no language selection will attempt to auto-detect)

Delete recordings - Will delete the audio recording files. No re-transcription will be possible after doing this.

Re-transcribe in another language

If you get the wrong/an undesired language on your summary, you can re-transcribe in the language you want:

  1. Ctrl/Cmd+K > Re-transcribe from recordings (press Enter)
  2. Select the language you want

Audio file handling

Audio recordings are automatically captured and stored to enable re-transcription when needed:

  • Audio files are stored securely in your Tana cloud storage, not locally on your device
  • Recordings have a technical limit of 59 minutes. Longer sessions will create multiple audio files (e.g., a 3-hour meeting will generate 3 separate recordings)
  • Starting and stopping transcription multiple times creates multiple audio recordings
  • If network connection is permanently lost during recording, audio files will not be persisted after 5 retry attempts
  • Audio files are not directly accessible through the interface

Transcription language

Tana supports realtime transcription in over 60 languages. By default, transcription uses auto-detect, which can dynamically switch between languages during a meeting.

To change this:

  • Shift-click the microphone button before starting the transcription,
  • Click the globe icon in the transcription view during, or
  • Set a default language using the Set default transcription language to... command

The summary will be generated in the same language as the spoken language. You can translate the summary by using AI chat.

Configure transcription

Transcription context

You can add context to improve the quality of transcription for difficult words or names. This is configured in the Realtime transcribe audio command (automatically added when you enable audio on a tag):

  • Add the Transcription context parameter to the Realtime transcribe audio command under "Compact menu".
  • Include names or other vocabulary manually, or reference a field (e.g. Attendees) to include dynamic context from the meeting.

Use cases beyond regular meetings

This feature is built for meetings but also works well for:

  • User interviews
  • Sales calls
  • Hiring interviews
  • Voice workflows
  • Lectures
  • And more!

Explore use cases and workflows in the Tana template store!

Related release notes

  • NewRe-transcribe from audio recording. If a transcript stops because of network drops, or you want a different language as output, you can now re-process it from backup audio. This is optional, and can be enabled under Tana Labs in user settings as "Transcript backup audio recording". ()
  • ImprovedBetter transcription model which supports 60 most common languages, very good at recognizing language switching and automatically choosing correct language. Used both for live transcription in app and from mobile capture. Non-supported languages in app fall back to Whisper (if you set it with Set default transcription language command). ()
  • FixedFixed transcription formatting and improved accuracy for Chinese language input. ()

Related FAQs

  • Does Tana offer a meeting notetaker?

    Jun 06, 2025

    Yes, Tana now offers a fully integrated bot-less AI meeting notetaker as part of the desktop experience. You can use it to transcribe meetings, generate summaries, and link notes directly to your work - without needing to install a plugin or add a bot.

    Key features of the meeting notetaker:

    • AI notetaker that doesn't join meetings – no bots, no guest links, no disruption
    • Works with any meeting tool – Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack calls, or even livestreams and videos
    • Works with in-person meetings - captures audio from all participants in the room, or from lectures, conferences etc.
    • Effective meeting notetaking in real time – follow the live transcript as people speak
    • 61 languages supported – with auto-detect and seamless switching during the conversation
    • Ready-made templates – for hiring, user interviews, investor meetings, and more
    • Support on both Windows and Mac (Tana Desktop App)
    • One-click on notification to start transcription, join the call, and open your Tana meeting note.
    • Speaker separation where Tana will try to separate speakers (best effort).
    • Summary auto-generated after the meeting.
    • Suggestion for action items, so you can easily tag to have them flow into your task system.
    • Integrates with your tasks, people, and projects – turn tasks from meetings into action instantly.

    Read more about the new Meeting notetaker.

  • How do I change the tags used in the meeting agent and calendar integration?

    Dec 02, 2024

    Supertags are created or assigned as part of the setup for your meeting agent/calendar integration. Here's a quick guide on how to change these tags post-setup.

    Calendar integration

    Supertags that are used during calendar sync are listed under Classification of events in the Google Calendar settings:

    Go to Account settings > Settings > Google Calendar settings > Classification of events

    For more on what the different event types mean, see here.

    When you change a tag, it needs to use the same fields that are set up for the calendar integration, otherwise the information will get lost. To check which fields are used during sync, go to Google Calendar settings > Advanced > Raw configuration:

    The raw configuration defines all the fields that Tana will sync specific calendar event information to.

    For more on what each setting does, go here.

    Meeting agent

    Supertags are used when processing the transcript to create meeting notes. These supertags are set during setup and can be changed by going into the command node that controls the meeting agent and the transcription process.

    First, you must navigate to the text processing agent command for your meetings. For instructions on how to find this, go here and scroll up: Meeting agent > Text processing agent command

    You should now have the Text processing agent config open. Here you will see parameters like "Tags used for X", which is the list of supertags used when processing meetings.

    To change the tags, you simply add or replace tags from these lists.

    However, there are several things to consider when you add/replace from these lists:

    • Study existing tag: Open the config for the tag you want to replace, and study how it's set up. Try and identify dependencies like specific fields that are also used in the meeting config. Try and make sure your replacement tag replaces as much of the original one as possible.
    • Set Base type: Make sure the new supertag you add has the appropriate Base type defined, and that it's suitable for the type of object it is:
      • Items typically use base tags: Project, Topic, Event
      • Entities typically use base tags: Person, Organization, Location
      • Action items typically use base tag Task
    • Decommission the old tag: Make sure the tag you're no longer using is merged with the one you're using, or deleted, to prevent clutter and confusion

    There are likely more things to consider, let us know if we missed any via Rate this article 👍👎.

  • Does the GPT log monitor show AI credits usage by the Meeting agent?

    Sep 12, 2024

    Only partially; the transcription of the meeting does not use OpenAI and is therefore not logged in the GPT log monitor.

    Meetings use a service called Soniox and we are working with them to expose the AI credit cost of individual meetings in a simple way, but currently it's not possible.

    The post-processing of the meeting transcript is however done using OpenAI and will be visible in the GPT log monitor.

  • How can I change the name of the meeting agent?

    Sep 05, 2024

    Here's a video showing how you can change the name of the meeting agent:

  • How can I revoke a meeting agent from a meeting I'm not hosting?

    Sep 05, 2024

    We are looking into creating a button that will make the agent leave a meeting if you press it. Until we have this in place, it is possible to force the agent to stop transcribing and kickstart the meeting notes processing if necessary.

    To do this:

    • Run the command Debug node on the meeting node
    • Set the Meeting bot status to Done
    • The agent should now have stopped transcribing, and the text processing agent should start running.