Notes

Notes and summaries

After a meeting, a summary provider of your choice turns the transcript and anything you typed into structured notes. You choose the provider in Settings › Meetings › Meeting summaries › Summary backend, and you can re-run any meeting with a different one.

What goes into the notes

• The transcript, with speaker labels.
• Your jottings. Anything you type in the note during the meeting is treated as first-class context and kept word for word. If the summary doesn't already contain it, it appears under Written notes.
• A template that sets the sections.
• Earlier notes in the same thread, when the meeting is a follow-up, so open action items carry forward.
• On-screen context, only if you turn on Settings › Meetings › Meeting context.

The provider also writes a short title for the meeting.

Templates

The default template, Auto, produces:

• Meeting Summary
• Key Discussion Points
• Decisions Made
• Action Items, as checkboxes with owners where mentioned
• Notable Quotes

Built-in alternatives are 1 to 1, Customer: Discovery, Hiring, Stand-Up, Weekly Team Meeting, and two examples: Notes Only (never acts) and Follow-up Drafts (never sends). A template can also ask Claude Code to act; see Writing a good template. Set the default in Settings › Meetings › Meeting notes › Default template, or write your own with Manage Templates….

Summary providers

New installs use Claude through an API key. The options you're most likely to want:

Sloth also supports OpenAI, OpenRouter, LM Studio and a custom endpoint. Each sends the meeting material to the service you configure.

Apple Intelligence is free and private but writes shorter, simpler notes. Long meetings are summarised in parts and then merged.

When a provider can't run

No Claude key

If Anthropic is selected without a key and Apple Intelligence is available, Sloth writes the notes with Apple Intelligence and shows Add a Claude key for better notes on the meeting. If Apple Intelligence isn't available either, the notes say the summary failed and explain both ways to fix it.

Claude Code fails

If a Claude Code run fails, Sloth writes the notes with Anthropic (when you've set a key) or else Apple Intelligence (when available), and puts a visible line at the top of the notes:

> Claude Code failed: not logged in. Notes written with Apple Intelligence.

If no stand-in is available, the summary fails and says why. Sloth never swaps providers silently.

Other failures

For hosted providers, Summary retries under Advanced retries short-lived errors before saving failed notes. The file in your Sloth folder records the provider that wrote the notes, including a stand-in, in summary_backend.

Re-summarize

Open a meeting and use its … actions menu. Re-summarize offers:

• Template: pick a different template. The action then reads Apply Template.
• Use Settings, to re-run with your default provider.
• Any other provider you've set up, with its models, for this one run. Your default doesn't change.

Sloth keeps your jottings when it re-runs a summary.