AI-powered intelligence surface for meetings, research & thinking
The Wall is a desktop application that acts as your real-time AI companion during meetings, research sessions, and collaborative thinking. It listens, transcribes, analyses, and generates structured insight cards across a configurable column-based workspace — so you can think deeper, challenge assumptions, and create meaningful progress.
Free to use under the MIT Licence
Each mode controls how aggressively the AI agents respond to your content:
| Mode | Description |
|---|---|
| Silent | Agents only run when explicitly triggered via Chat. No automatic dispatch on transcript — ideal for focused note-taking where you want full control. |
| Active | Agents auto-run on transcript with fast dispatch (3 second debounce). The most proactive mode — best for meetings or live brainstorming. |
| Sidekick | Agents auto-run with a gentler pace (6 second debounce). Optimised for 1:1 collaboration and research sessions. |
Switch modes at any time from the top bar. Switching to Silent immediately stops the auto-dispatch pipeline.
Start sessions pre-configured for specific use cases. Each template defines which agents and columns are active, the operating mode, and a guiding system prompt for the AI:
| Template | Focus |
|---|---|
| Brainstorming | Idea generation, pattern finding, and creative exploration |
| Research | Deep research, claim verification, and evidence gathering |
| Decision Making | Trade-off analysis, risk assessment, and structured evaluation |
| Retrospective | Pattern recognition, gap analysis, and actionable improvements |
| Interview | Question generation, claim tracking, and insight extraction |
| Strategy | Visionary thinking, constraint mapping, and strategic planning |
Each template includes a Session Goal input where you can provide specific context (e.g. "We're evaluating whether to migrate from AWS to GCP") that guides both the AI agents and the Chat.
Create your own templates with full control over:
- Which agents are enabled for the session
- Which columns are visible
- Default operating mode (silent / active / sidekick)
- System prompt that guides the AI's behaviour
- Goal placeholder text
Custom templates are saved to your local database and appear alongside the built-in templates in the launcher.
Organise your session across 15+ specialised columns:
- Transcript — Live transcription with speaker diarisation, audio recording, card numbering, splitting, and renumbering
- Notes — Manual and agent-generated notes
- Concepts — Key themes and ideas extracted from the conversation
- Ideas — Cross-referenced, actionable ideas generated from all other cards
- Questions — Probing questions and clarifying queries
- Claims — Assertions and fact-checked claims
- Gaps & Risks — Missing information, assumptions, and failure modes
- Alternatives — Alternative approaches and options
- Actions — Extracted action items and decisions
- Highlights — Cards flagged by you or the AI
- Context — Reference documents and background material
- Summary — Auto-generated per-column summaries with configurable prompts and change tracking
- Deep Research — Researcher agent output
- Knowledge Graph — Visual force-directed graph of concepts and relationships
- Agent Queue — Live view of running and queued AI agent tasks
- Trash — Deleted cards with restore capability
Each column header shows a filtered/total card count badge when search or agent filters are active. Columns include Copy and JSON buttons for quick export of their contents.
Cards are numbered sequentially within their column for easy reference. Each card displays the agent name at the top (for agent-generated cards) along with source links, timestamps, and speaker attribution.
Card actions include copy, inline edit (Markdown), view prompt, highlight, find related, link, split, renumber, and delete.
35 built-in agents run autonomously in the background:
| Agent | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Concept Extractor | Extracts key concepts, ideas, and themes |
| Claim Identifier | Identifies assertions and claims |
| Claim Verifier | Fact-checks identified claims |
| Claim Challenger | Generates counter-arguments |
| Gap Finder | Surfaces missing information and blind spots |
| Clarity Seeker | Flags ambiguous language and suggests clarifying questions |
| Problem Finder | Identifies potential problems and failure modes |
| Tension Finder | Detects conflicting statements and priorities |
| Solution Finder | Proposes solutions to identified problems |
| Researcher | Deep research and web retrieval |
| Requirement Finder | Extracts explicit and implicit requirements |
| Constraint Finder | Identifies constraints and limitations |
| Alternative Finder | Generates alternative approaches |
| Trade-off Enumerator | Maps trade-offs between options |
| Pattern Finder | Identifies recurring themes and structures |
| Cliche Finder | Flags jargon and vague language |
| Planner | Creates structured plans and action items |
| Refiner | Improves and sharpens existing cards |
| Summariser | Generates concise summaries |
| Challenger | Devil's advocate against consensus |
| Rhetoric Generator | Persuasive arguments and talking points |
| Collaborator | Synthesis points and areas of agreement |
| Skeptic | Raises doubts and demands evidence |
| Supporter | Identifies strengths and reinforces valuable ideas |
| Knowledge Manager | Curates the knowledge graph |
| Questioner | Probing questions to deepen understanding |
| Chain of Thought Reasoner | Step-by-step complex problem working |
| Problem Solver | Structured problem-solving frameworks |
| Coach | Guidance and Socratic questioning |
| Visionary | Extrapolates future implications |
| Pragmatist | Grounds ideas in practical reality |
| Idea Generator | Cross-references all agent output to generate actionable ideas |
| Action Tracker | Extracts action items and decisions |
| Thinker | Deep reflection on topics |
| Image Generator | Generates images from concepts |
The Agent Configuration panel includes a Column Matrix tab — a grid view showing which column each agent outputs to. Click any cell to reassign an agent's output column. When a session is active with template-based constraints, use the All / Session Enabled filter toggle to show only the agents and columns active in the current session.
Each column header includes an agent filter button that lets you filter which agents' cards are shown within that column. The column badge shows filtered vs total card counts.
An auto-populated force-directed graph visualisation of concepts, entities, topics, and claims — with relationships like "Supports", "Contradicts", "Depends On", and more. Click any node to see the cards that reference it, or double-click to trigger deep research.
The graph toolbar provides controls for:
- Display modes — switch between force-directed, radial, and hierarchical layouts
- Labels toggle — show or hide node labels
- Physics toggle — freeze or animate the simulation
- Node spacing — adjust the repulsion force between nodes
Generate a realistic AI-simulated meeting with configurable participants, roles, personas, and context — useful for testing workflows or exploring ideas.
A built-in RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) chat panel that searches across all your session cards to answer questions with full context. When a session template provides a system prompt or session goal, the Chat incorporates this context into its responses. Chat history is persisted per session with per-message controls.
- OpenAI
text-embedding-3-smallfor neural embeddings (requires API key) - Local TF-IDF fallback for offline use
- Semantic card search across all sessions (
Cmd+K)
Export your session data in multiple formats:
- JSON — Full structured session backup
- Markdown — Readable document format
- CSV — Spreadsheet-compatible
- HTML — Styled web page
- Obsidian — Wiki-link format for Obsidian vaults
- Clipboard — Quick copy
Agent names appear at the front of exported card text for clear attribution.
- Live audio recording with real-time transcription via Web Speech API
- OpenAI Whisper API integration for high-accuracy transcription
- Speaker diarisation — assign different colours to different speakers, with persistent speaker management
- Type-to-transcribe — manually type transcript segments with speaker tagging
- Card splitting — split long transcript cards at natural breakpoints
- Renumbering — renumber transcript cards after edits or splits
- Light and dark themes — switch between light and dark mode
- SVG icons — crisp iconography throughout the interface
- Status bar — persistent footer with session info and save status
- All data stored locally in SQLite via
better-sqlite3 - Auto-save every session change
- Import/export individual sessions or full backups
- No data ever leaves your machine unless you configure cloud APIs
- Electron — Desktop runtime
- React 18 + TypeScript — UI
- Vite — Build tool
- Tailwind CSS — Styling
- Zustand + zundo — State management with undo/redo
- SQLite (better-sqlite3) — Local persistence
- graphology — In-memory knowledge graph
- @tanstack/virtual — Virtualised rendering for large card lists
- mitt — Event bus
- Node.js 18+
- npm
git clone https://github.com/embernet/thewall.git
cd thewall
npm install
npm run electron:devnpm run electron:buildOpen the app, start a session, then click ⚙️ Settings → API Keys to configure:
| Slot | Provider Options | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Chat | Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Google Gemini | AI agents and chat |
| Embeddings | OpenAI | Semantic search |
| Transcription | OpenAI Whisper | Audio transcription |
| Image Generation | OpenAI DALL-E, Flux | Image creation |
All API keys are stored encrypted in your local SQLite database. Available models are fetched dynamically from each provider's API.
Click ? Help in the toolbar within the app for detailed feature documentation, or see the in-app Help page.
MIT — see LICENSE
Created by Mark Burnett © 2026