Forgeling
What you record never leaves this machine
Forgeling makes small desktop tools for the things you record at work. Notes records the call, transcribes it and works out who said what. Capture takes the screenshot or the screen recording and gives it a proper editor. Each one does its work on your own hardware. Nobody rents you your own recordings.
Not downloadable yet. Notes will have a free version and a license you buy once, with no monthly fee either way. Capture is free for personal use, and commercial users should pay for Pro. Get an email when that changes.
The tools
Small tools, one rule
Each one records something while you are working and keeps the result on your own machine. Small on purpose, and each does its one job properly.
Forgeling Notes
Record the meeting. Keep the recording.
Forgeling Notes records your meetings, transcribes them and works out who said what, all on your own machine. The write-up runs locally too, or through an AI key you already pay for. No subscription.
Read moreForgeling Capture
Capture the screen. Keep the file.
Forgeling Capture takes screenshots and screen recordings on Windows, gives each one a proper editor, and saves the result as an ordinary file on your own disk. It is free for personal use, with no limit on screenshots or recordings. macOS and Linux versions are coming soon.
Read moreOn your hardware
The recording stays put
Every hosted tool works the same way: what you record goes up to their servers, on their subscription, and stays there. That is the part people agree to without reading, and the part they cannot undo later.
Notes does the work where the meeting already is. Recording, transcription and speaker separation run on the machine in front of you, so the audio has nowhere to be uploaded to and no retention policy to outlive you. It all exports too, audio, transcript and summary alike, in formats other tools can read.
Capture does the same for the screen. The screenshot or the recording becomes a file in a folder you chose, and nothing is uploaded, because there is nowhere for a capture to be uploaded to.
Staying should be a preference rather than a consequence.
Where your meeting goes
- Audio
- stays here
- Transcript
- stays here
- Speaker labels
- stays here
- Summary*
- stays here
Where your capture goes
- Screenshots
- stays here
- Screen recordings
- stays here
- Camera and microphone
- stays here
Unless you point Notes at a hosted API key, which is your choice to make and your account to spend. Point it at Ollama or LM Studio on this same machine instead and this row stays put with the others.
Notes itself checks for updates, and validates your key if you hold a license. Capture itself checks for updates, and checks your key if you hold Pro. What those requests carry is set out in the privacy page.
Your key, your model
Bring your own AI, or bring none
In Notes, the summary is the one step that wants a model. You decide which, and you pay whoever you already pay, at their rates, with nothing added on top. There is no margin on tokens here because the tokens are not mine to sell.
Point it at a model running on this same machine and the Summary row of the ledger joins the others.
- Your own key
- OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini AI Studio, OpenRouter
- Anything compatible
- Any endpoint that speaks the OpenAI API
- This machine
- Ollama, LM Studio, or a model the system already ships
Nothing to download yet
Notes will be a license you buy once, with a free version alongside it. A notetaker at twenty dollars a month is twelve hundred dollars over five years for software that stops the day you stop paying.
Capture is free for personal use. If you use it commercially, you should pay for Pro.
None of it is on sale yet, so for now there is a list. Put your address on it and you will hear from me once, when that changes.