Data boundaries

Know where meeting content goes.

Meeting content leaves the Mac only for the providers and publishing destinations you configure. Each capability has its own processing path and disclosure.

Local library User-selected providers Independent retention controls

Processing boundary by capability

Capability Local path When content leaves the Mac
Audio capture AVAudioEngine and ScreenCaptureKit write managed local files When AWS Transcribe is selected
Transcription WhisperKit or Apple Speech AWS receives mixed live audio or a file through streaming/S3 batch
Speaker analysis FluidAudio receives source audio locally Fallback can send transcript text, not audio, to the configured Notes model
Note generation Local Ollama server Bedrock or a remote Ollama host receives prompt, transcript, and included context
Search Apple English sentence embedding and lexical matching Never; search does not invoke Bedrock or Ollama
Usage totals Local SQLite event ledger Never
Published files Local folder or locally mounted vault According to the sync or storage service behind your chosen destination

Managed data on the Mac

Internal files live under ~/Library/Application Support/MeetingMaid/:

MeetingMaid.store          SwiftData metadata and relationships
UsageStatistics.sqlite     Local recording and note event ledger
Recordings/                Managed CAF and imported media copies
Transcripts/               Timestamped segment JSON
Notes/                     Versioned Markdown notes
MeetingMetadata/           Recovery copies of generated and manually edited details
SearchIndex/               Searchable text chunks and sentence vectors
Models/                    Reserved; currently unused
Logs/meetingmaid.log       Rotating application log
Imports/                   Reserved; currently unused

SQLite may create -wal and -shm sidecars beside both database files. Imported media is copied into Recordings. WhisperKit and FluidAudio manage their model caches outside this directory.

Inspect, do not reorganize

Use Settings > General > Storage > Open in Finder. Do not rename or move managed store, audio, transcript, note, or metadata files while Meeting Maid is running.

Source-audio retention

Source audio is retained forever by default. A shorter policy permanently removes eligible playback files while retaining the meeting record, transcript, and notes.

  • Available windows: Forever; three years; one year; nine, six, three, two, or one month; 15 days; one week; one day.
  • Changing the picker only updates the storage preview.
  • Apply and confirmation are required to persist the policy.
  • Cleanup runs after launch recovery and once per day.
  • Active, processing, importing, loaded, recent, unsafe-path, shared-path, and undated audio is protected.

Calendar data

Calendar access is optional and read-only. When a match is applied, Meeting Maid stores a snapshot of title, organizer, source calendar, attendees, and join link. Later edits to the invitation do not rewrite that snapshot.

Attendee names can be sent with transcript evidence to the selected Quick or Notes model for speaker matching and are included in generated note context and attendance output.

AWS credentials

Meeting Maid reads standard profiles from ~/.aws/config and ~/.aws/credentials. It supports access-key, IAM Identity Center, assumed-role, and credential-process profiles.

  • Resolved credential values are held in memory and are not displayed or saved by Meeting Maid.
  • Credential-process stdout and stderr are not copied into the UI or application log.
  • Interactive Identity Center sign-in happens outside the app.
  • Check credentials tests profile resolution and known expiration, not service authorization.
Review AWS account policies separately

Meeting Maid's model filter does not change or verify active AWS retention or provider-data-sharing settings. Cross-region and global inference profiles can process content outside the configured region.

Search and usage data

SearchIndex contains local title, metadata, transcript, and note chunks plus optional vectors. It is rebuilt when source fingerprints or the macOS embedding identifier changes and removed with a normally deleted meeting.

UsageStatistics.sqlite stores identifiers, event dates, and live-recording duration for aggregate totals. It is independent from the meeting library: disabling or clearing it does not delete content, and deleting content does not rewrite historical totals.

Deletion and published copies

Deleting a meeting through Meeting Maid sends its known managed audio, transcript, notes, metadata recovery copy, and search cache to Trash before removing the library row. It does not alter the historical usage ledger.

Copies published to a plain folder or Obsidian vault sit outside managed storage and are not deleted with the meeting. Storage or sync services behind those destinations have their own retention and sharing behavior.

Clear all app data

Settings > General > Danger Zone > Clear All App Data is the destructive start-over action. It is unavailable while a recording, import, or meeting-processing task is active. Type DELETE exactly, then choose Clear Data and Quit. The deletion cannot be undone.

The reset removes meetings, recordings, transcripts, notes, prompts, app-managed model files, usage statistics, search data, logs, settings, and pending Meeting Maid notifications. It also resets onboarding state. Meeting Maid quits after deletion; reopen it to start the six-step first-run setup again.

Data outside Meeting Maid stays where it is

Files exported to a folder or Obsidian vault, framework-managed WhisperKit and FluidAudio model caches outside Meeting Maid's data folder, and permissions granted in System Settings are not changed.

Recording consent and sensitive output

  • Use a consent process appropriate to the people, jurisdictions, and policies involved.
  • Automatic call recording stays off until you enable it.
  • Transcript publishing stays off until you enable it because verbatim speech is more sensitive than notes.
  • AI-tidied transcript export creates an additional full-transcript model request.
  • Logs may contain operational context; review them before including excerpts in a report.