Meetings

Overview

Meetings brings together what Overshow already captures. screen frames, OCR text, accessibility context, and transcribed audio. into a meeting workspace. The product infers when you are in a meeting using heuristics across UI, text, and audio, then lets you review a full transcript, generate an encrypted summary from built-in or custom templates, and extract action items grounded in what was said. Calendar data, where connected, enriches titles, times, and participants; pre-meeting briefs pull relevant past captures before you join. Everything described here is oriented around on-device processing and your local store.

How meeting detection works

Detection is heuristic, not a guarantee. Overshow combines signals so that ad-hoc calls and common tools are recognised without you starting a separate “record meeting” mode.

Signals that contribute

Signal type	Role
Application identity	Known meeting clients (for example Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and similar) strongly suggest an active call.
OCR and on-screen text	Keywords and UI chrome associated with calls, waiting rooms, and shared content add confidence.
Browser context	URL patterns for web-based meeting products help when the call runs in a tab rather than a desktop app.
Audio	Multi-speaker activity and meeting-like audio patterns support detection when video is minimal or off-screen.

No single signal is required in isolation; the product weighs what is available for each capture window.

Idle timeout

If meeting-like activity stops for five minutes, the session is treated as no longer active for detection purposes. That idle threshold reduces false “still in meeting” states when you leave a tab open or a client running after the call has actually ended.

Meeting lifecycle

A meeting moves through a small set of states that drive what you see in the UI and what background work runs.

Meeting states

State	Meaning
Detected / active	A meeting is recognised and treated as ongoing; capture within the session bounds feeds transcript and summary inputs.
Ended	The call has finished (including after idle timeout); the session is closed for live capture but may still be awaiting or completing summary work.
Summary pending	The meeting has ended (or you have requested a summary) and the summary pipeline is queued or running.
Summarised	A summary has been written and stored encrypted at rest; you can read sections, copy text, and review action items.
Deleted	The meeting record has been removed from your workspace; associated summary and UI entries are cleared according to product behaviour.

Lifecycle flow in practice

Expand: typical path from detection to summary

1. Detection combines app names, OCR keywords, browser URLs, and multi-speaker audio (where present) to open a meeting session.
2. While active, transcribed audio (and related screen-derived text) accumulates; calendar metadata may attach title, start/end, and participants if you have connected a calendar.
3. When the call ends or idles out, the session moves to ended; if a summary is expected, state becomes summary pending.
4. The summary pipeline gathers scored screen text and audio segments aligned to the meeting window, then produces a narrative via an on-device language model or a baseline fallback if no LLM is available.
5. On success, storage is encrypted at rest and the meeting is summarised; you can regenerate or delete from the meetings UI as needed.

Summary generation

What data feeds the summary

Summary generation is bounded by meeting start and end (including idle-driven end). It collects:

Input	Detail
Screen text	Frames are scored for usefulness; the pipeline caps contributions so long sessions still manage cost and noise.
Audio segments	Transcribed speech within the same time window grounds the narrative in what was actually said.
Template	Headings, prompts, and fields from the selected template steer structure and emphasis.

LLM versus baseline

Path	When it applies
LLM	Preferred when your build has a configured on-device or local language model available for narrative generation.
Baseline fallback	Used when the LLM path is unavailable or fails; you still get structured output, but phrasing and depth may differ.

Summaries and related artefacts are stored encrypted at rest like other sensitive meeting content.

Built-in templates

Built-in layouts cover common meeting shapes so you can start immediately and stay consistent across teams.

Template focus	Typical use
Sales calls	Outcomes, objections, next steps, and customer signals aligned to revenue conversations.
One-to-ones	Career themes, blockers, commitments between two people.
Standups	Progress, plan, and impediments in a short, repeatable structure.
Custom	User-defined layouts (see below); treated as first-class alongside built-ins in the selector.

Choosing a template per meeting

The template selector on the /meetings route applies to generation and regeneration. Switching template before generating changes section headings and prompts; it does not alter the underlying transcript. For recurring formats, pick the same template each time so comparisons week-on-week stay meaningful.

Custom templates

You can create, edit, and reuse templates that match how your organisation actually works.

Aspect	Behaviour
Structure	Define headings, prompts, and fields that the generator fills from transcript and OCR-derived text.
Storage	Preferences are stored locally; they are private to your device and account.
Reuse	Save once, apply to any detected meeting of that type; duplicate when piloting changes so you can roll back.

Action items

Action items are extracted from transcript content. commitments, follow-ups, and tasks implied or stated explicitly in speech.

Mode	Description
Standard extraction	Included in the main summary pipeline where the template and model surface tasks alongside narrative sections.
Dedicated pass	When enabled, a separate pass focuses specifically on action items for higher precision on noisy or long calls.

Always review extracted items before sharing; speech recognition and inference can merge speakers or mis-hear dates.

Transcript view

The transcript presents full meeting text with speaker labels where diarisation or speaker identification is available. Use it to verify summaries, copy quotations, and spot names or numbers the summary condensed.

Transcript versus summary

The summary is abridged and structured; the transcript is the verbatim (as transcribed) record. For compliance or editorial workflows, treat the transcript as the source of truth and the summary as an aide-mémoire.

Pre-meeting briefs

Overshow watches for calendar events starting soon, then generates a brief from relevant past captures. not generic advice.

Element	Source
Topics and context	Retrieved from your local index around titles, participants, and related apps.
Timing	Tied to upcoming event windows so briefs appear when they are actionable.

Connecting Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook is described in Calendar integration; brief quality depends on both calendar accuracy and historical capture for the same workstreams.

Calendar enrichment

When a calendar is linked, event titles, start and end times, and participants can be added to meeting context. That improves list readability in the meetings UI and gives summarisation clearer anchors than raw timestamps alone.

Meeting-scoped search

Search and answer flows can be restricted by meeting_id so that results draw only from material associated with that session. Use this when you want evidence inside one call without pulling unrelated days or applications.

Desktop meetings experience

The /meetings route is the hub for meeting history and actions.

UI area	Behaviour
List	Meetings are grouped by date for quick scanning.
Detail	Opening a meeting shows summary sections, transcript access, and metadata.
Generate summary	Explicit control to run or re-run summarisation after a meeting ends or if the first pass failed.
Delete	Removes the meeting from your workspace per the deleted state above.
Real-time updates	Live messages report summary progress so you are not left guessing while the pipeline runs.

Meeting-aware overlay (macOS)

On macOS, a meeting-aware overlay variant can show a live transcript alongside consent-oriented banners where the product needs to make capture visibility obvious during calls. Behaviour follows platform conventions and your capture settings; it is designed to stay flow-preserving rather than modal.

Tips

• Align custom template sections with how your team already writes notes so adoption is frictionless.
• For long sessions, scan the transcript first, then read the summary to confirm nothing material was dropped.
• Use meeting-scoped search when stakeholders ask “what did we agree in that call?” rather than searching the entire index.
• Keep calendar and ignored apps settings honest so detection, briefs, and titles match reality.