Earkeep for people managers

Earkeep gives people managers a complete, private record of every 1:1, skip-level, and team meeting, captured automatically on their own device, so remembering what was said and promised stops depending on their own memory.

Your job is follow-through at a volume memory can't sustain

A manager's primary goal is getting results through other people: remembering what each report needs, following up on what was promised, and following through on it, week after week, across five to fifteen 1:1s plus team meetings, skip-levels, and ad-hoc conversations. Trust on a team is built on one loop: you said, I remembered, I did. Everything below comes back to making that loop hold automatically, so you don't have to carry it in your head.

As one manager put it, describing exactly this strain: "This role depends heavily on memory, follow-up, and context switching, and I'm trying to carry too much of it in my head." Another admitted the workaround has limits: "I often depend on others' memories to keep track as I lose my own notes… most times I'm on spot because I'm not remembering."

The manager whose reports think they have an eidetic memory

The aspirational version of this job is a real thing managers have actually experienced: reports who quietly assume their manager has an eidetic memory, because every 1:1 picks up exactly where the last one left off, every commitment ("I'll talk to finance about your raise") comes back resolved, and every "you mentioned in March that…" turns out to be accurate. That reputation isn't a memory trick. It's a habit of complete notes, and it's exactly what Earkeep gives you: an eidetic memory of every meeting you've had, without the discipline of writing three lines after each one.

The week where memory keeps failing

The pain managers describe isn't a lack of effort, it's the sheer volume of what has to be tracked and the meetings that were never going to be recorded on purpose:

1:1s reset to zero every week. "We'd start with 'how's it going?', sit in a bit of silence, talk through some operative tasks, and then run out of time before getting to anything deeper. The next week, same thing." One manager's fix was writing three lines after every 1:1 and rereading them before the next one, a discipline that works but doesn't scale past a handful of reports.
Reports notice when the manager forgets. "Your 1-on-1s are probably crap… if they're just status updates." And from a report's side: "the manager talking about themselves for 27 minutes and then with 3 minutes to go, 'so how are you doing, anything you need?'"
Performance review season means reconstructing a year from nothing. Calibration asks you to cite specifics from months ago, but by then the only record is whatever fragments survived in a shared doc.
Skip-levels and hallway conversations were never going to be recorded on purpose. The "got a minute?" conversation and the call that turned serious halfway through carry some of the most sensitive content of the week, and no one was going to hit record for them.
Note-taking competes with listening. In every hard 1:1, visibly typing signals distraction at the exact moment a report needs your attention.

How always-on capture fixes all of it

No start/stop, no bot to invite

You never hit record. A meeting becomes a kept span by selecting it on the timeline afterward, which is exactly what makes the unplanned "got a minute?" conversation capturable: it only needs to matter, not to have been scheduled.

How spans work →

Calendar auto-spans handle the recurring rhythm

Connect Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, or any ICS calendar URL, and your 1:1s and team meetings are started and ended automatically, with no manual marking for the standing week.

Every 1:1 exists as a complete, searchable record

Instead of three lines of manual notes per report, you get the whole conversation: the thread, the commitment, the parts you'd otherwise only half-remember by next week.

Efficient by design

A voice-activity-detection pipeline transcribes only when someone is actually speaking, so a full day of always-on capture uses no more resources than transcribing the meetings you'd have recorded anyway.

Why privacy matters even more for 1:1 content

1:1s are the most sensitive meetings a manager runs: performance concerns, personal circumstances, compensation, conflicts with other teammates. That's exactly why managers describe a specific distrust of corporate notetaker bots. One put it bluntly: "Multiple times I've seen the AI transcript give a terrible context that makes jokes look like arguments and insults. It's a matter of time before someone gets fired from it." Another: "Whenever I see 'so-and-so's AI has joined the meeting,' I already know they're not going to retain anything." Yet the same skeptics concede the core idea: "a recording is far more useful."

Audio never leaves your device. It's processed only in memory, never written to disk, and never uploaded to anyone's API. There's no bot in the room announcing itself, no account, no cloud.
Transcripts are plain files you alone hold. They live locally as files you own outright: open them, grep them, back them up, or feed them to any tool you choose. No third party, not IT, not HR, not a vendor, has a copy anywhere else.
It's a private memory, not a corporate record. The difference between "so-and-so's AI has joined the meeting" and a manager who simply remembers everything is the difference between a system your reports have to route around and one that just makes you more reliable.

The full mechanism is on private by design.

Workflow: turn a year of 1:1s into a performance review in minutes

Earkeep's in-app agents and MCP server run directly against your meeting history, entirely on your device:

Weekly 1:1 prep. Ask "what did I promise this report last time, and what's still open?" before every 1:1, instead of rereading a doc or trying to remember.
"What did I promise anyone this week?" Run one query across every 1:1 span on your calendar and get every open commitment back, the exact discipline that used to take an evening of manual note review.
Performance review season. Point an agent at a report's full year of 1:1 transcripts and ask for concrete, dated examples of growth, recurring themes, or unresolved issues, the specifics calibration demands and memory alone can't supply months later.
Skip-level and hiring interview follow-up. Because you're not taking notes during the conversation, you can review it afterward with an agent instead, then act on it while it's still fresh.
External tools, if you use them. Connect Claude Desktop, Cursor, or anything MCP-capable to Earkeep's MCP server and read your meetings from whatever tool already anchors your workflow.

Tools managers use today

Shared 1:1 docs (Google Docs, Notion, OneNote), one per report. They only capture what you remember to type, and reset to a blank page every week.
Paper notebooks, still defended by many managers as the professional choice, but searchable by no one, including the manager three months later.
HR platforms (Lattice, 15Five, Culture Amp) where mandated: useful for structure, not built to hold the actual conversation.
Org-provided AI notetakers in Teams or Zoom, widely distrusted for the reasons above: a bot announcing itself, lossy summaries, recordings in someone else's cloud.

See how Earkeep compares to the notetaker bots your org may already run on vs Otter and vs Fireflies, to the note-first alternative on vs Granola, and to local but manual transcription tools on vs MacWhisper.

Pricing

€39, once, for one device. No subscription, no per-seat pricing, no tiers. Try the full app free for 14 days, no email or account required, then buy if it earns a permanent place in your week. If it doesn't work out after buying, email [email protected] within 14 days for a full refund, no questions asked. See full pricing details →

FAQ for people managers

Will my reports know they're being recorded?

Earkeep runs on your device, capturing meetings you're already in, and how you communicate that to your team is your call. Many managers tell direct reports plainly that 1:1s are captured locally for their own reference, precisely because it's the opposite of a corporate notetaker bot: nothing leaves your device, nothing is stored in a shared company system, and no one else, not IT, not HR, gets a copy. Being transparent about that distinction tends to land very differently than "an AI has joined the meeting."

Can my company or IT see these transcripts?

No. Transcripts are plain local files on your disk, never uploaded anywhere. There's no account, no cloud sync, and no server Earkeep controls. Only you can open, copy, or delete them.

Does this replace my HR platform, like Lattice or 15Five?

No. Earkeep isn't a performance-management system; it's the raw memory underneath one. Use Earkeep to capture and recall the actual conversations, and keep whatever structured tracking your HR platform requires.

What about meetings I'd never plan to record, like a serious hallway conversation?

That's exactly what retroactive spans are for. Because Earkeep is always listening in the background rather than started per meeting, you can select the span after the conversation turns serious, with no bot invitation and no advance decision required.

Does always-on capture slow down my device or drain the battery?

No more than transcribing the meetings you'd record anyway. A voice-activity-detection pipeline only runs transcription when someone is actually speaking, using the same on-device models either way, so all-day listening doesn't mean all-day resource use.

Does it work for in-person 1:1s, not just video calls?

Yes, as long as your laptop is open nearby to capture the room's audio. It works the same way for video calls, capturing system audio without a bot joining anything.

See it against a real week of 1:1s

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