Show HN : Multilingual Minimal Local (MCP only) alternative to Granola

A developer publishing as IndianTinker released Quills, a downstream fork of Andrew Jones's macOS menu-bar recorder Quill that adds shared multilingual Parakeet v3 model support, a `quills models --download` pre-install command, `quills doctor` model diagnostics, pause/resume on Control–Option–Command–P, and a loopback-only read-only MCP server for meeting status, metadata, transcript search and transcript reads usable from Codex, Claude Code and OpenCode. Recording and transcription run on-device after a one-time model download, and the MCP server exposes no recording, editing or deletion tools and makes no outbound network requests. The fork ships as a single Swift binary with no app bundle, built via `swift build -c release` and installed to /usr/local/bin/quills.

A local macOS meeting recorder and multilingual transcriber, built on Quill https://github.com/digimata/quill by Andrew Jones. Quills extends the original project with shared multilingual Parakeet v3 models, model setup and diagnostics, and a local read-only MCP server for working with meeting transcripts from tools such as Codex, Claude Code, and OpenCode. The menu-bar controls record your mic and system audio as separate tracks. When you stop, Quills transcribes both on-device and writes a speaker-tagged transcript. Recording and transcription stay on your Mac. Connected MCP clients may send transcripts to their own services or hosted models. Quills works on its own; VoiceInk and other transcription apps are optional. On first transcription, it downloads its speech model if needed an internet connection is required for that download . After setup, transcription runs offline. You can also download the model in advance with quills models --download . Quills keeps the original Quill architecture: a single Swift binary, a feather menu-bar icon, and no app bundle. Quills is a downstream fork of Quill https://github.com/digimata/quill , which provides the original macOS menu-bar recorder, two-track audio capture, local transcription pipeline, and LaunchAgent support. The changes made in this fork are documented below so the upstream work and downstream contributions remain clearly separated. The following additions were made in this fork: - Shared Parakeet v3 model support — reuse FluidAudio's shared parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3 cache, including models already installed by VoiceInk, instead of maintaining a second private copy. - Model download command — added quills models --download to install the multilingual Parakeet v3 model before an important meeting. - Custom model locations — added transcription.model dir support so a compatible model can be selected directly or through a symlink. - Improved model diagnostics — quills doctor checks the selected model location, and the menu bar reports model-loading and transcription progress. - Documentation and installation updates — documented shared-model reuse, first-use setup, custom model paths, and background launch-at-login usage. - Local read-only MCP server — added a loopback-only, multi-client MCP endpoint for meeting status, metadata, transcript search, and transcript reads. It has no recording, editing, or deletion tools and does not make outbound network requests. - Menu-bar MCP lifecycle controls — added MCP status plus Start, Stop, and Restart actions to the feather menu. Quills stops the MCP child before a normal application exit, and launch-at-login starts both without an open terminal. - Pause and resume — pause both tracks from the menu or with Control–Option–Command–P. Paused sections become silence to preserve transcript timing, and the feather dot turns orange until recording resumes. - Accidental recording cutoff — discard sessions with less than 10 seconds of unpaused capture before transcription or the completion hook runs. - Copy MCP details — copy the current endpoint, port, connection instructions, tools, resources, and suggested queries directly from the menu into an AI agent. These changes are maintained here as downstream contributions on top of the upstream project. See the repository history for the individual commits and implementation details. git clone https://github.com/IndianTinker/quills.git cd quills swift build -c release codesign --force --sign "<your codesigning identity " --identifier com.indiantinker.quills .build/release/quills sudo install -m 755 .build/release/quills /usr/local/bin/quills quills models --download optional: prepare the model before first use quills install --launch-at-login optional: start in the menu bar on login See Code signing why it matters code-signing-why-it-matters — without this step, Quills asks for microphone and System Audio Recording permission on every recording. Quills uses the quills command and /usr/local/bin/quills install path. For compatibility with existing Quill installations, it retains ~/.config/quill/config.json , ~/Library/Application Support/Quill/status.json , and existing .quill- session markers. The signing identifier and LaunchAgent label are now com.indiantinker.quills . Migrating from Quill requires granting microphone and system-audio permissions again; subsequent updates should use the same signing identity and identifier to preserve those permissions. The MCP status JSON retains its quill field; legacy quill:// resource links remain readable alongside quills:// links. New LaunchAgent logs are /tmp/quills.out.log and /tmp/quills.err.log . The upstream MIT copyright and license are preserved in LICENSE https://github.com/IndianTinker/quills/blob/master/LICENSE . The menu's Storage submenu saves one of three audio retention settings: Delete audio after transcription , Keep last audio both tracks of the newest fully transcribed session , or Do not delete anything the default . Cleanup runs when the selection changes, after transcription, and at startup. Transcripts, metadata, and logs are kept. Pending, failed, partially transcribed, and pre-update recordings keep their audio, even when transcripts exist: an older session without the completion marker is never made eligible just because it has a transcript. Changing the setting applies immediately to eligible recordings; deleted audio cannot be restored by selecting a different option. The setting is stored as audio retention in ~/.config/quill/config.json , with values delete after transcription , keep last , or keep all . After pulling new Quills changes, build and sign first. Wait until recording and transcription finish before stopping the old LaunchAgent, installing the new binary, and registering the LaunchAgent again: swift build -c release codesign --force --sign "<your codesigning identity " --identifier com.indiantinker.quills .build/release/quills codesign --verify --strict .build/release/quills launchctl bootout gui/$ id -u ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.indiantinker.quills.plist 2 /dev/null || true sudo install -m 755 .build/release/quills /usr/local/bin/quills quills install --launch-at-login When migrating an existing Quill installation, run /usr/local/bin/quill install --uninstall after building and signing, before starting Quills. This removes the old com.digimata.quill LaunchAgent so both apps do not start at login and compete for the MCP port. Keep the old binary until the new installation is verified. The signed binary is not optional. swift build produces an ad-hoc, linker-signed executable with no stable code identity, and macOS privacy TCC binds permission grants — microphone, System Audio Recording — to the binary's identity. An ad-hoc binary has no usable identity, so macOS prompts for permissions on every single recording and never remembers the grant. Sign with a real codesigning identity once and the prompts stop: the first recording asks, every later recording is remembered. Rebuilds keep the grants as long as the same identity signs the new binary. List available identities with: security find-identity -v -p codesigning Any Apple Development identity works; a self-signed code-signing certificate created in Keychain Access works too. The last command starts Quills and its MCP server in the menu bar. The Terminal window can then be closed; the LaunchAgent keeps Quills running at login. The feather menu shows MCP status and provides Start, Stop, and Restart controls. Quills stops its MCP child before a normal exit. If the menu-bar parent is terminated unexpectedly, the child detects that its parent disappeared and closes its loopback server as well. Requires: macOS 15+ Core Audio process taps for system audio — no virtual device, no kernel extension . Apple Silicon recommended for transcription speed. 1. Run it quills in a terminal, or the LaunchAgent . 2. Click the feather in the menu bar → Start recording. First use prompts for microphone and System Audio Recording permissions. While recording, the white feather shows a red dot at its bottom-right, the menu shows a running elapsed counter, and macOS shows the purple recording indicator. 3. Pause private sections with Pause recording in the menu or Control–Option–Command–P ⌃⌥⌘P from any app. Use the same control to resume in the same session. The feather dot turns orange and the menu shows paused . Both tracks save silence during pauses, so private speech is excluded while elapsed time and transcript timestamps stay aligned. Audio devices remain connected, so macOS's recording indicator stays on. Pause has no effect when no session is open; you can also stop a paused session. 4. Click → Stop recording when the meeting ends. Transcription starts automatically. The status bar shows model loading and transcription progress; a notification fires when the transcript is ready. Sessions with less than 10 seconds of unpaused recording are discarded when stopped: their audio folder is removed, no model is loaded or transcription queued for them, and on stop does not run. Exactly 10 seconds is kept. Paused time does not count toward this minimum. Existing recordings are unaffected. Option-click the feather to start or stop recording. A single click or right-click opens the menu immediately. Press Control–Option–Command–R ⌃⌥⌘R from any app to start or stop a recording. This provides access even if macOS hides Quills in a crowded menu bar. The feather stays one fixed icon wide; status details live in its menu and tooltip. If another app has claimed the shortcut, Quills logs a warning and its menu control remains available. The shortcut needs no Accessibility permission. Each session lands in ~/Recordings/<yyyy.MM.dd-HHmm / : | File | Contents | |---|---| | mic.caf | your side default input device, AAC | | system.caf | everything the Mac played — the other side of the call AAC | | meta.json | start/end timestamps, duration, per-track start offsets | | transcript.json | canonical transcript — engine provenance + timed, speaker-tagged segments | | transcript.md | the same transcript rendered for reading | | transcribe.log | transcription progress/errors for this session | Two tracks on purpose: speech models do better on clean single-source audio, and mic-vs-system is free two-party diarization — me vs them with no speaker-identification model. CAF on purpose: unlike m4a, it needs no finalization pass — if the process dies mid-meeting, everything already written is still readable. Built in, on-device, automatic. The engine is Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 multilingual: 25 European languages plus Japanese via FluidAudio https://github.com/FluidInference/FluidAudio 's Core ML port. It uses FluidAudio's shared user-level cache at ~/Library/Application Support/FluidAudio/Models/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3 . If another app such as VoiceInk has already installed a compatible v3 bundle, Quills reuses those files. If the model is absent, quills models --download or the first transcription while online downloads v3 into that same shared cache. Quills never keeps a second private model copy. The Models submenu lists supported models, their language/size guidance, and whether they are installed. Click an installed model to select it; click an absent model to download and validate it before selecting it. Downloads run in the background, and failed downloads leave the previous selection in place. Models are stored in FluidAudio's shared cache, each in its own directory. | Model | Guidance | |---|---| | Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 default | Fast, multilingual; recommended starting point | | Parakeet TDT 0.6B v2 | Fast, English only; 600M parameters | | Parakeet TDT-CTC 110M | English only; smaller, faster loading, less memory | Speed and accuracy depend on hardware, language, and audio quality. These labels are selection guidance, not a measured accuracy ranking for meeting recordings. Whisper and other model families require additional engines and are not yet supported by Quills. Use Browse for existing model… to choose a model type and an existing FluidAudio-compatible Core ML folder. Quills checks that it loads, then saves the path and reuses the files in place, including folders shared with another app or accessed through a symlink. Choose the matching type; a folder contains multiple compiled .mlmodelc bundles and a vocabulary JSON file, rather than one universal model file. An incomplete custom folder reports an error and is never populated by automatic downloads. Show selected model in Finder opens its location. A model change takes effect at the next transcription session. A session already being transcribed keeps the same model for both tracks; queued sessions use the new selection. Transcript JSON records the model used. Files on disk are shared; loaded model instances in memory belong to each app separately. Before a meeting, run this once to make model setup explicit: quills models --download quills doctor Each track is transcribed separately, shifted by its start offset so both share one clock, and merged by timestamp. Before writing, Quills filters long, nearly identical microphone spans that overlap the same system speech, keeping the system version as them . This reduces speaker playback appearing twice. Replies under five words, distinct speech, and later repetitions are preserved. It is conservative and may leave echoes with substantially different recognition. The feather pulses continuously during both model loading and transcription recording still takes priority with a white feather and red dot . The dropdown also shows the selected model. Shared model files do not mean shared live inference: Quills loads its own Core ML model instance and releases it when the queue drains. Reusing a model already loaded inside VoiceInk would require VoiceInk to expose an inference service that Quills can call. Jobs run in a serial queue — you can start a new recording while the last one transcribes. Unfinished jobs resume on next launch the filesystem is the queue: a session with meta.json but no transcript.json is pending . Failures append to the session's transcribe.log and never block later jobs. The engine sits behind a small protocol; a Whisper engine WhisperKit large-v3-turbo is planned as the fallback / re-transcription option. Optional, at ~/.config/quill/config.json : { "recordings dir": "~/Recordings", "transcription": { "enabled": true, "engine": "parakeet", "model": "parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3", "model dir": "~/Models/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3" }, "on stop": "my-hook" } - recordings dir — where sessions land. Resolution order: --out flag config ~/Recordings . - transcription.enabled — set false to just record. - transcription.model — parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3 default , parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2 , or parakeet-tdt-ctc-110m . The Models menu saves this. - transcription.model dir — optional path to a FluidAudio-compatible Core ML bundle matching the selected model type . It can be a folder used by another local transcription app, or a symlink to that folder. When absent, Quills uses the standard FluidAudio shared cache. quills models --download and quills doctor use this selected path. Custom paths must already contain a complete model. Selecting a built-in model in the menu clears the custom path. - mic voice processing — Apple's echo cancellation on the mic default off . Set true when recording meetings through the speakers, so playback doesn't bleed into the mic track and get transcribed twice as "me". The trade: while the voice unit is live, macOS ducks other playback slightly .min ducking is configured, but it can't be zeroed . On headphones there's no echo to cancel, so raw capture is the better default. - on stop — shell command spawned with the session directory as its argument, after the transcript is written or right after recording if transcription is disabled . Wire it to whatever comes next: summarization, filing, indexing. quills run the menu-bar daemon ^C to quit quills run --out <dir custom recordings root default ~/Recordings quills doctor check permissions, recordings folder, models quills models list supported models and cache locations quills models --download pre-download/reuse the selected model quills models --download --model parakeet-tdt-ctc-110m download without changing selection quills mcp --out <dir run the local read-only MCP server directly quills install --launch-at-login quills install --uninstall Quills includes a local, read-only MCP https://modelcontextprotocol.io/ server for consuming meeting data from MCP clients. When Quills is running in the menu bar, it starts the server automatically at: http://127.0.0.1:47777/mcp The server binds only to loopback, reads only from the configured recordings folder and Quills’ local runtime-status file, and has no outbound network client. It exposes status, meeting metadata, transcript search, and complete transcript reads. It does not expose recording, editing, deletion, or any other write operation. The endpoint uses independent MCP sessions, so Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and other clients can connect concurrently to the same running Quills instance. The get status tool and quills://status resource include both Quills runtime state and MCP connection details: state, loopback host, port, full endpoint, transport, and read-only mode. Use the feather menu-bar icon to see whether MCP is running and to Start , Stop , or Restart it. Choosing Quit Quills stops the MCP child process before Quills exits. With quills install --launch-at-login , the menu bar app and its MCP server starts without leaving a terminal open. Choose Copy MCP details in the feather menu to copy a guide you can paste into your AI agent. It includes the current endpoint and port, server state, transport, connection steps, tools with example arguments, resources, and a quick workflow for finding transcripts. It works even when MCP is stopped, so you can copy its configuration before starting it. The MCP client must run on the same Mac to reach the loopback endpoint. The port can be changed in ~/.config/quill/config.json : { "mcp port": 47777 } This server being local does not make a cloud MCP client local: a client that sends transcript content to a hosted model can still transmit that content. For end-to-end local processing, use a local MCP client and local model. - Swift — single SPM executable target - Core Audio process tap AudioHardwareCreateProcessTap , macOS 14.2+ — system audio capture via a private aggregate device - AVAudioEngine — mic capture - AVAudioFile — streaming AAC encode into CAF - FluidAudio / Parakeet — on-device Core ML transcription - NSStatusItem — the whole UI - A global tap records everything the Mac plays — notification dings, music, all of it. Don't play Spotify during meetings or ask for a per-process picker if it bothers you . - If recordings come out silent, check System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording. - The first v3 download is about 600 MB. Run quills models --download on a reliable connection before recording an important meeting. - A model from another app must be the FluidAudio Core ML bundle for the selected Parakeet type; Whisper, GGUF, or other model formats cannot be loaded by Quills. To avoid duplication, point transcription.model dir directly at it or use a symlink, for example: ln -s "/path/to/model" ~/Models/parakeet-v3 . - The binary embeds its Info.plist TEXT, info plist so TCC can attribute permissions to quills itself when running as a LaunchAgent.