Story

Hi HN,

I built this because meeting bots create an awkward dynamic. After 10+ years in the workplace, I've watched this pattern repeat:

Client joins call → sees unknown participant → "What's that bot?" → awkward pause.

Even after explaining it's "just for notes," there's visible hesitation. The bot-as-participant model is fundamentally broken for client-facing work.

The core idea: you open Vopal in a browser tab, it captures your computer's audio directly via Web Audio API. No bot joins the meeting. No extra participant in Zoom/Meet/Teams. The meeting looks completely normal.

Beyond that, Vopal does three things:

1. Real-time transcription • 99% accuracy (custom Whisper model optimized for meetings) • 100+ languages, handles multiple speakers • Transcription streams as people speak

2. Privacy-conscious processing • You control what gets recorded (start/stop in browser) • Audio processed through secure pipeline • No meeting bot joining as "participant"

3. Actionable summaries • AI extracts: decisions, action items, key topics • 3-bullet output, not 10-page transcripts • "What did we agree on?" answered in 10 seconds

Architecture:

  Browser tab (Web Audio API) → captures system audio
  Streaming transcription → real-time Whisper inference
  AI summarization → structured action items

Current status: Web version live now. iOS and Android apps launching soon.

Tech approach: Browser-based audio capture (no installation required), streaming WebSocket transcription, custom Whisper fine-tune on 10K+ business meeting corpus.

Try it: https://vopal.ai (free tier: no credit card required)