Recording a meeting: consent, etiquette, and why Savvy has no hidden mode

If a tool transcribes your call, you are recording it, whether or not an audio file is kept. That is the starting point for everything below. This post is general orientation on what the law commonly expects, what to say to the other side, and why we chose not to build a hidden mode. It is not legal advice, and consent rules vary by country, by state, and by the meeting platform's own terms. When it matters, ask a lawyer who knows your jurisdiction.

What Savvy records

Savvy captures your microphone and the system audio of the call, streams it to your transcription provider as it is captured, and keeps local audio and transcripts for 30 days. Savvy deletes expired files at startup. Nothing joins the call. No bot appears in the participant list, and the other side receives no automatic notice. The homepage's privacy section shows where data goes.

That last point is the one that matters for consent. With a hosted meeting bot, the bot's presence is itself a form of notice. With Savvy, telling people is your job.

One-party and all-party consent

Most consent rules for recording a conversation fall into two families.

One-party consent means it is enough that one participant, which can be you, knows the conversation is being recorded. United States federal law works this way, and so do many US states.

All-party consent means everyone on the call must agree. A number of US states require it, California, Florida, Illinois and Washington among them. When participants are in different places, the safe assumption is that the stricter rule applies.

In the European Union and the United Kingdom the frame is different. A recording that identifies a person is personal data, so the question is not only consent but whether you have a lawful basis to process it and whether you were transparent about it. In practice most organisations handle this with a spoken notice at the start of the call and a written policy behind it.

In Spain, where many of our users take calls in Spanish or Catalan, recording a conversation you take part in is generally treated differently from recording one you are not part of, and sharing a recording with third parties is a separate question again. The pattern repeats across countries: being a participant helps, telling people helps more, and passing the recording on is where rules tighten.

None of this is a substitute for checking your own situation. It is enough to know that "I was on the call" is not a universal answer.

Rules that are not laws

Two more layers apply before you get to legislation.

Your employer's policy. Many companies restrict AI assistants in customer calls, or require a specific disclosure. Some ban them. Check before the first call, not after.

The other side's policy. Some organisations do not allow their calls to be transcribed by third-party tools at all. If a counterparty asks you to turn it off, turn it off. In Savvy, stopping the meeting stops the capture.

What to tell the other side

Say it at the start, in one breath, and then move on. Something like:

"Before we begin: I use a notes assistant that transcribes the call on my machine so I can stay on our documents instead of typing. The transcript stays with me and is deleted after 30 days. Is that all right with you?"

If they say yes, you are done. If they hesitate, offer to switch it off, and mean it. If they say no, stop the meeting in Savvy and take notes by hand. A call that starts with a small courtesy tends to go better than one that starts with a discovered recording.

Do not bury the disclosure in a calendar invite footer and count that as consent. Some people will not read it, and the ones who do will notice you did not say it out loud.

Etiquette after the call

• Do not paste the transcript into a shared document or send it to the other side without asking. Transcripts read differently from how a conversation felt.
• Do not quote the transcript back at people in a later meeting. "You said at 14:32" is a way to lose a relationship.
• Delete what you do not need. Savvy deletes expired local recordings and transcripts at startup after 30 days; you can stop a meeting and remove it sooner.
• If you used the assistant to answer a question in the call, the answer is still yours. Own it.

Why there is no hidden mode

Some products in this category sell the ability to be invisible on a screen share, so that nobody knows you are using an assistant. We do not, and the FAQ says so plainly.

Savvy is a small always-on-top panel. If you share your screen, it shows up like any other window. It is your own notes in the room, not a disguise.

The reason is not only legal. A tool built to be undetectable trains you to hide it, and a person who is hiding something on a call is a worse negotiator than one who is not. We would rather you say "yes, I use a notes assistant" out loud, in the first minute, and then get on with the meeting. The visible panel and the silence-by-default both follow from that.

Use it where AI assistance is allowed. Check the rules of your meeting first. Then tell people.

For the tradeoffs, read Local-first meeting assistants vs bots that join the call.