tapeback

Local meeting recorder for Linux. Records system audio + microphone via PipeWire/PulseAudio, transcribes with Whisper, identifies speakers, saves Markdown to your Obsidian vault. Everything runs on your machine, no cloud services or API calls needed for transcription.

Works with any video call platform: Google Meet, Zoom, Teams, Telegram, Discord, Slack huddles.

Features

• Platform-agnostic: captures OS-level audio, works with any app
• Local transcription: faster-whisper on CPU or CUDA GPU
• Speaker diarization: pyannote identifies who said what
• Stereo channel separation: your mic (left) vs. others (right) for accurate "You" attribution
• Obsidian-native output: Markdown with YAML frontmatter, wikilinks to audio files
• LLM summarization: Anthropic, OpenAI, Groq, Gemini, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, Qwen (with automatic provider fallback)
• System tray: start/stop recording from the tray icon, no terminal needed
• CLI-first: tapeback start, Ctrl+C to stop, done

tapeback is modular — the base package handles recording and transcription. Speaker diarization and LLM summaries are optional and installed separately.

Installation

Arch Linux (AUR)

yay -S tapeback                              # recording + transcription
yay -S tapeback tapeback-tray                # + system tray icon
yay -S tapeback tapeback-llm                 # + LLM summaries
yay -S tapeback tapeback-diarize             # + speaker diarization
yay -S tapeback tapeback-tray tapeback-llm tapeback-diarize  # everything

All system dependencies (ffmpeg, PipeWire) are installed automatically.

pip / uv

Install system dependencies first:

# Arch / Manjaro
sudo pacman -S python uv ffmpeg pipewire-pulse

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install python3 pipx ffmpeg pulseaudio-utils

# Fedora
sudo dnf install python3 pipx ffmpeg pipewire-pulseaudio

Then install tapeback:

uv tool install tapeback                          # recording + transcription
uv tool install "tapeback[tray]"                  # + system tray icon
uv tool install "tapeback[llm]"                   # + LLM summaries
uv tool install "tapeback[diarize]"               # + speaker diarization
uv tool install "tapeback[tray,llm,diarize]"      # everything

pipx or Nix

# pipx
pipx install tapeback
pipx install "tapeback[tray,llm,diarize]"         # everything

# Nix
nix run github:yastcher/tapeback                  # basic
nix run github:yastcher/tapeback#tray             # + system tray icon
nix run github:yastcher/tapeback#llm              # + LLM summaries
nix run github:yastcher/tapeback#diarize          # + speaker diarization
nix run github:yastcher/tapeback#full             # everything

Quick start

tapeback start                     # start recording, Ctrl+C to stop

That's it. The transcript is saved to ~/tapeback/meetings/.

To save to your Obsidian vault instead:

mkdir -p ~/.config/tapeback
echo 'TAPEBACK_VAULT_PATH=~/Documents/obsidian/vault' > ~/.config/tapeback/.env

System tray

Run without a terminal — right-click the tray icon to start/stop recording:

tapeback tray

Icon color shows the current state: gray = idle, red = recording, orange = processing.

To autostart on login, create ~/.config/autostart/tapeback-tray.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=tapeback
Exec=tapeback tray
Type=Application
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

Works on any XDG-compatible desktop (KDE, GNOME, Hyprland, Sway, etc.).

Speaker diarization

Speaker diarization identifies who said what in the recording. Without it, tapeback uses stereo channels: your mic is labeled "You", everything else is labeled "Other".

To enable diarization, you need a HuggingFace token with access to pyannote models:

1. Create account at huggingface.co
2. Accept license at pyannote/speaker-diarization-3.1
3. Accept license at pyannote/segmentation-3.0
4. Create token at huggingface.co/settings/tokens
5. Add to ~/.config/tapeback/.env:

TAPEBACK_HF_TOKEN=hf_your_token_here

First run downloads the pyannote model (~1 GB). An NVIDIA GPU is strongly recommended — diarization on CPU is very slow.

LLM summarization

After transcription, tapeback can add a brief summary, action items, and key decisions using an LLM.

Set an API key for at least one provider in ~/.config/tapeback/.env:

TAPEBACK_LLM_PROVIDER=gemini
GEMINI_API_KEY=...

Provider	Env var	Default model
anthropic	ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	claude-sonnet-4-20250514
openai	OPENAI_API_KEY	gpt-4o
groq	GROQ_API_KEY	llama-3.3-70b-versatile
gemini	GEMINI_API_KEY	gemini-2.5-flash
openrouter	OPENROUTER_API_KEY	google/gemini-2.5-flash:free
deepseek	DEEPSEEK_API_KEY	deepseek-chat
qwen	DASHSCOPE_API_KEY	qwen-turbo

If the primary provider fails, tapeback automatically tries the next available provider (any provider with an API key set).

CLI reference

tapeback start [NAME]              Start recording (Ctrl+C to stop)
tapeback stop                      Stop recording from another terminal
tapeback tray                      System tray icon
tapeback process <FILE> [--name N] Transcribe an existing audio file
tapeback summarize <FILE>          Add LLM summary to transcript
tapeback status                    Show recording status and settings

tapeback start --no-diarize        # skip speaker identification
tapeback start --no-summarize      # skip LLM summary
tapeback process meeting.mp3 --name "weekly-standup"
tapeback summarize notes.md --provider gemini --model gemini-2.5-pro

Output format

Stereo recordings produce two transcript sections:

• Transcript — raw Whisper output with channel-based labels (You / Other)
• Diarized Transcript — speaker-identified output (You / Speaker 1 / Speaker 2 / ...)

Words where Whisper is uncertain (probability < 0.5) are shown in italics.

---
date: 2026-03-23
time: "14:30"
duration: "01:23:45"
language: en
audio: "[[attachments/audio/2026-03-23_14-30-00.wav]]"
tags:
  - meeting
  - transcript
---

## Summary

Brief overview of the meeting.

### Action Items

- [ ] **You:** Send the report by Friday
- [ ] **Speaker 1:** Review the PR

### Key Decisions

- Use PostgreSQL instead of MongoDB

---
# Meeting 2026-03-23 14:30

**Duration:** 1h 23m 45s | **Language:** en

---

## Transcript

[00:00:01] **You:** Hello, let's start with the *backend* changes.

[00:01:23] **Other:** Sure, I have the slides ready.

---

## Diarized Transcript

[00:00:01] **You:** Hello, let's start with the *backend* changes.

[00:01:23] **Speaker 1:** Sure, I have the slides ready.

[00:02:45] **Speaker 1:** Can we move on to the frontend?

Configuration reference

All settings via environment variables (prefix TAPEBACK_) or ~/.config/tapeback/.env file.

Core

Variable	Default	Description
TAPEBACK_VAULT_PATH	~/tapeback	Path to output directory (Obsidian vault)
TAPEBACK_MEETINGS_DIR	meetings	Subdirectory for meeting notes
TAPEBACK_ATTACHMENTS_DIR	attachments/audio	Subdirectory for audio files

Transcription

Variable	Default	Description
TAPEBACK_WHISPER_MODEL	large-v3-turbo	Whisper model (tiny, base, small, medium, large-v3-turbo)
TAPEBACK_LANGUAGE	en	Transcription language code
TAPEBACK_DEVICE	cuda	cuda or cpu
TAPEBACK_COMPUTE_TYPE	auto	auto, float16, int8, or float32 (auto picks int8 when free VRAM < 4 GiB)
TAPEBACK_BEAM_SIZE	5	Whisper beam search width
TAPEBACK_CHUNK_LENGTH	2	Max VAD chunk (seconds) before splitting for Whisper; prevents lost speech after long pauses
TAPEBACK_PAUSE_THRESHOLD	1.0	Seconds; split segments on silence gaps >= this

Audio

Variable	Default	Description
TAPEBACK_MONITOR_SOURCE	auto	PulseAudio monitor source name
TAPEBACK_MIC_SOURCE	auto	PulseAudio mic source name
TAPEBACK_SAMPLE_RATE	48000	Recording sample rate

Speaker diarization

Variable	Default	Description
TAPEBACK_DIARIZE	true	Enable speaker diarization
TAPEBACK_HF_TOKEN	(empty)	HuggingFace token (setup)
TAPEBACK_MAX_SPEAKERS	(auto)	Maximum number of speakers
TAPEBACK_SPECTRAL_MERGE_THRESHOLD	0.96	Spectral speaker merging (0 = off; lower merges more aggressively)

LLM summarization

Variable	Default	Description
TAPEBACK_SUMMARIZE	true	Enable LLM summarization
TAPEBACK_LLM_PROVIDER	anthropic	Primary provider (list)
TAPEBACK_LLM_API_KEY	(empty)	API key (or use provider-specific env var)
TAPEBACK_LLM_MODEL	(provider default)	Override model name

Uninstall

# Arch Linux
yay -R tapeback tapeback-tray tapeback-diarize tapeback-llm

# pip / uv
uv tool uninstall tapeback

# Remove cached ML models (~2-5 GB)
# Skip if you use HuggingFace for other projects
rm -rf ~/.cache/huggingface/

Roadmap

• Speaker profiles: learn and remember recurring speakers across meetings
• Real-time transcription: live streaming with partial results
• Multi-language meetings: detect and handle language switches mid-meeting
• Windows support: WASAPI loopback capture

Support

If you find tapeback useful, consider a small donation:

USDT (TRC-20)	ADA (Cardano)
TAECw9FebnoSN2n3H2Fk9Bv5aA8fwpCuBB	addr1q9tqg2g8wxpxawsrvea84lms3ampuda0ygzawuxq77sxwr48mxj2vq2rzd4nsmhpdhy6lftp30tz78tetzr29mtvkqmsskrmp7

Links

• Changelog
• Deploy
• CI/CD

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.