What it is
An agent that joins the call (Zoom/Meet/Teams) or listens locally, produces a transcript, a short summary, a list of decisions and action items with owners. Granola, Fireflies, Otter, Fathom, Read.
Where it came from
Otter.ai pioneered transcription; in 2024-25 Granola took over the wave with a "local assistant on top of your notes" approach (privacy-first, no guest bot sitting in the call). The quality of LLM summaries made the write-up genuinely useful instead of a wall of text.
Why it took off
YipitData: Granola shows 3x spend growth in half a year, near-zero churn, and is displacing Otter/Fireflies/Fathom. Surveys record an explosion of notetaker adoption in 2025-26. The pain is universal: there are plenty of meetings, memory is limited, and taking notes by hand steals your focus.
How to use it now
- Put one tool on all your work calls; turn on auto-summaries and export action items to your tracker.
- Use transcripts as a knowledge base: search "what did we decide about X" instead of re-listening.
- The stack: notetaker to CRM or task tracker (via Zapier or n8n) — decisions land in the queue by themselves.
- For private topics pick the local-first option (Granola).
What to watch out for
Recording a conversation without consent is a legal risk: in August 2025 Otter.ai was hit with a federal class action over "covert recording". Warn the participants, check the retention policy, and do not let a bot into confidential calls without permission.