AI PocketScribe
Your notes never leave your PC.

Own your meeting notes. Not a subscription.

A fully open-source AI note-taker for about €30 in parts — instead of a monthly fee and a stranger's server.

Open source~€30 in hardwareNo subscription
AI SCRIBE87% ▮▮▯
14:32
DATE 08-19
TUE 6 REC
NOTES 12
TODO 4
QUEUE 2
WAIT 1
SD38%
3h 12m of recording left
((• SYNCED 08-19 14:02
A
B
02 — The device, working

Two buttons. Four gestures. Every screen.

This is the real state machine from the firmware. Click a button for a short press, hold it for a long press. Keyboard works too: tab to a button, Enter or Space.

USB-C â–­ESP32-S3-PICO-1-N8â–¤ microSD
AI SCRIBE87% ▮▮▯
14:32
DATE 08-19
TUE 6 REC
NOTES 12
TODO 4
QUEUE 2
WAIT 1
SD38%
3h 12m of recording left
((• SYNCED 08-19 14:02
NAVIGATE
hold 1.5 s = long press
RECORD
WHAT JUST HAPPENED

Home. The four counters are the four states a recording can be in.

Aopen Menu
A holdopen Menu
Brecord a Quick Note
B holdconsent screen, then Meeting
TRY THIS PATH
B recordA pauseA resumeB stopA menuA → SyncB sync

Watch QUEUE fall to zero and NOTES go up by one when the sync finishes.

EVENT LOG
—Idle on Home

How it works

Everything stays local, then syncs on its own.

Recordings write straight to the device, and syncing to your own server happens automatically over Wi-Fi. The transcription runs on that same hardware, so there’s no subscription — just the electricity to run it.

Your notes come back to the device.

Once a recording is transcribed and cleaned up, it syncs back down to the e-paper screen. You can read your notes and to-dos right there — no need to open the web dashboard.

Consent first, always.

Starting a meeting recording always shows a reminder to ask the room for consent — there’s no way to skip it. You can also pause and resume mid-conversation without losing anything.

Sips power, wakes instantly.

The e-paper screen draws nothing once it’s drawn, so sitting idle costs no battery. Leave it untouched and it sleeps; press the button and it’s back, instantly, ready to record.

From press to note

Five steps, start to finish — nothing to manage in between.

01
Record

Press the button and speak. It saves straight to the device — no Wi-Fi needed.

02
Sync

Once you’re back on Wi-Fi, it uploads to your own server automatically.

03
Transcribe

Speech becomes text using an AI model running on your own hardware.

04
Enrich

It’s cleaned up into a title, category, tags and action items — ready to use.

05
Read it back

Open it in the dashboard, or read it right on the device.

OPTIONAL, NOT REQUIRED

Transcription always runs locally, on hardware you own — that part isn’t negotiable. Want AI-written summaries and extracted to-dos too? You can optionally connect your own trusted cloud provider for that step. Only the cleaned-up text is ever sent — never the audio — and it stays off unless you turn it on.

05 — The dashboard

Where the recording becomes a note.

A single-page app served by the same backend. Read, correct, search, tick off action items. Anything the AI wrote, you can rewrite.

pocketscribe.home.arpa
AI PocketScribe2 new transcriptionsMM
LibraryTo-dos
unread firsttag â–¾ all has open to-dos
MEET
Standup — API rollout
12m 41s
We are holding the API rollout until the ingest retries are merged.
workapi×rollout×2 open
NOTE
Buy a microSD adapter for the bench
0m 42s
Need an adapter to read the card straight off the laptop.
errandsshopping×
NOTE
Bring-up notes: ES8311 mic gain
3m 15s
Gain is too hot at the default codec setting, dial it back 6 dB.
hardwareesp32×audio×2 open
MEET
Call with Lena — handover
18m 03s
Walked through the open PRs and who owns what after the handover.
workhandover×1 open

The Library replaces separate Notes / Meetings tabs — one segmented filter, an unread dot per card, and tag chips you edit right there.

Own the whole stack

Fully open source — firmware, backend and dashboard, all yours to audit, fork and run forever. The hardware runs about €30 today, a fraction of a €200 professional meeting recorder, and there's no subscription after that: just the electricity for a small always-on machine.

Real accounts, real isolation

PBKDF2-SHA256 at 600 000 iterations, signed HttpOnly session cookies, rate-limited sign-in, and a user_id filter on every query.

Local Whisper by default

large-v3-turbo in int8 needs ~1.6 GB of RAM. No API key, no upload. The cloud engine exists, switched off.

One command to host it

./deploy/install.sh installs Docker if needed, generates secrets, builds, starts, and prints the admin login.

No open ports required

Your own domain with automatic HTTPS via Caddy and Let's Encrypt — or a Cloudflare Tunnel and nothing exposed at all.

What you need

It is a build-it-yourself project — about €30 in parts, all told. Nothing here is for sale.

01Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.54" e-Paper AIoT board200×200, black & white, two buttons, no touch
02microSD cardholds recordings, manifests and cached note text
03LiPo cellthe board charges it, but ships without one
04USB-C cablenative USB-CDC — flash it from the browser
05Any always-on machine16 GB RAM, no GPU, ~1.6 GB for the model
AI PocketScribe
Running on real hardware. Self-hostable today. Firmware v0.1.0.