Note taker for consultants: you run the session, it keeps the record

A note taker for consultants records the sessions you run — client calls, workshops, project kickoffs — so you can lead the conversation instead of writing it down, and hands you the record afterwards. Dalm, a Mac app, records without joining the call. It recognises the speech on your Mac and sends no audio anywhere; the transcript is synced to our servers automatically, and a language model run by a third party writes the summary and the documents you ask for. Each client can live under a tag of their own. There is a Free plan.

What you need from a session you are running yourself

When you run the session, you cannot also be the one writing it down. The facilitator’s notes are the thinnest in the room, but the consultant is the one who has to say afterwards what was agreed, what the client asked for and what is out of scope. So what you need from a session is the client’s own words on the points that matter, the moments you will be asked about later easy to find, and a record you can lay next to the next session with the same client.

Calls, rooms and a client’s own recording

On a call, Dalm records your microphone and the sound of the other apps on your Mac, so nobody joins the meeting and the client sees no bot. In a room — a workshop, a kickoff at the client’s office — it records through your Mac’s microphone. If the client sends a recording of their own, you can bring the audio or video file in to be transcribed. Step by step, recording is covered for Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet.

Consulting sessions and what you get after each

Dalm works out from the conversation what kind of meeting it was and shows it at the top of the meeting. You cannot pick or change it; when it is unsure, it files the meeting as a general one. These are kinds of consulting session it can recognise, and what you get after each:

The session	What you get after it	What it is for in your work
A consulting session with a client	A one-screen summary, a formal record with the agenda and each decision, and a list of who does what by when	The record, where the client wants decisions on record; the list, for the next steps on both sides
A project kickoff	A one-screen summary, a formal record with the agenda and each decision, a follow-up letter for the client, and a list of who does what by when	The letter is the one to send: what was agreed and the next step, without your internal notes; the record and the list set up the project
A strategy session	A one-screen summary, a formal record with the agenda and each decision, and a list of who does what by when	The record, for the choices the client will want to see later; the list, for who carries them out
A workshop or a brainstorm	A one-screen summary, and a list of who does what by when	What came out of the workshop and the next steps, straight after it

Whatever the session, there is the transcript and a summary written automatically, in which each point keeps the words it came from, and where something was not said, the place is left empty instead of guessed. The documents are one click away. If you want the same document after every session — say, the points a proposal needs from a scoping conversation — describe it once in your own words as a template and tick the box to build it for each new meeting. What to put on a kickoff agenda is in the meeting agenda template. Meetings where the client hears back from you — a discovery call, a check-in, an escalation — are on the client recap page, with what can go to the client after each.

Where a client’s words go: the audio and the text

A client’s voice is recognised on your Mac and never sent anywhere as audio; the audio is deleted once the text exists. The words travel: the transcript is synced to our servers automatically, there is no setting that keeps it on the Mac, and a language model run by a third party reads it to write the summary and any document you ask for. The text is kept on our servers with no set expiry, for as long as your account, or the team workspace the meeting belongs to, exists. So a client call recorded in Dalm is text on our servers, not only on your Mac. What is kept where is set out on the privacy page.

Keeping one client apart from another

Give each client a tag — one of eight colours or one of your own — and put it on their meetings; the same tags work for your dictations. The list of meetings filters by tag, by person, by period and by the kind of meeting, and search looks through transcripts, meeting names and descriptions and the text of every document, though not your notes. If a client’s own team uses Dalm and invites you, the team becomes a second workspace for you: your own meetings, dictations, tags, dictionary and templates stay where they are, and you can switch between the two. A session is filed in the workspace that was selected when it was scheduled, or when its recording started if it was not scheduled, and it cannot be moved to the other one afterwards. In a client’s workspace, the people who run it can see meetings recorded there, apart from some kinds of meeting the app keeps from them. Meetings belong to a workspace, so if the client removes you from the team, the meetings stay with the team and your dictations go with you. Who in a team sees whose meetings is on the team page.

Following an engagement from one session to the next

Everything you say lands in one archive you can search: meetings, phone calls, conversations in the room, and what you dictate to a model. Dalm’s assistant answers questions about one meeting at a time; asking one question across all of them is in development. When the app takes a new session to be part of a series with earlier ones, anything left open last time can come back in the new summary when the app judges it came up again, marked with when it first came up and how many times it has come up since. Your sessions of the same kind with different clients count as one series, so a point left open with one client can be offered in a session with another. It is carried over only when the app judges it came up again; otherwise it shows as “Possibly a continuation”. Before a summary goes to a client, look at every carried-over point. Across your meetings, a list of tasks sorts what was agreed by due date, with a filter for your own tasks, and a decision log keeps what your meetings recorded as a decision, month by month, searchable by text and meeting name. In the summary, every point keeps the words it came from. Every quote shows you where it was said — open it and the transcript opens at that place.

What to tell a client before you record

Dalm does not join the call and tells no one it is recording, so telling the client is up to you; before your first meeting, the app reminds you of that. Whether your contract with a client lets its conversations be transcribed and kept by an outside service is a question for the contract, not for this page. What you can tell the client is what happens to their words: the audio stays on your Mac and is deleted and the text is synced to our servers and read by a third-party language model. The rules on recording consent differ by place.

When Dalm is not the right fit for a consultant

• When your contract says the conversation may not be stored outside your company, even as text. The transcript is synced to our servers and read by a language model.
• When the recording itself is part of what you deliver, or you need to hear a client again. The audio is deleted once the text exists, and there is nothing to play back; keep your own recording.
• When your client expects to read the notes in a browser or on Windows. A client can read a meeting only in the Dalm app on a Mac; everyone else gets what you send them.
• When you work on Windows or on an Intel Mac. Dalm needs a Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later.
• When the call is very short: under 100 words, a recording is not counted as a meeting.

Free for one consultant, Team for a practice

Recording your sessions, the transcripts and the summaries come with the Free plan, and Free is a plan rather than a trial. If you work alongside other consultants, a team shares one dictionary of terms, one set of templates and one set of tags; who sees whose meetings is on the team page. What the paid plans add is on the pricing page. Dalm needs a Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later and an account; while it is not public, the way in is the waitlist.