Notes

Your notes are plain files

Sloth writes every meeting as two Markdown files in a folder on your Mac: one for the notes, one for the transcript. Any editor, AI tool or sync service can read them, and Sloth never touches a file that belongs to another meeting.

Where the folder is

By default the Sloth folder is ~/Documents/Sloth. Manage it in Settings › Meetings › Sloth folder:

Save meeting notes to turns the folder on or off. It's on by default.
Folder shows the location, with buttons to choose a folder, go back to the default, and reveal it in Finder.

Layout

Sloth/
├── README.md
├── notes/
│   └── 2026-09-15 1000 Team Standup.md
├── transcripts/
│   └── 2026-09-15 1000 Team Standup.md
└── .trash/
    ├── notes/
    └── transcripts/

notes/ holds the note you see in the app: the summary plus your written notes.
transcripts/ holds the speaker-labelled transcript. Meetings with no transcript get no transcript file.
Files are named yyyy-MM-dd HHmm <title>.md from the meeting's local start time. If a name is taken, Sloth adds (2), (3) and so on.
README.md explains the folder. Sloth writes it once and never rewrites it, so it's yours to edit or delete.

Sloth writes a meeting's files once it has finished processing, and rewrites them when the meeting changes in the app: a new summary, edited notes, a new title, or an edited transcript. Renaming a meeting renames its files.

Frontmatter

Both files start with YAML frontmatter:

---
sloth_id: 42
title: "Team Standup"
date: "2026-09-15T10:00:00+01:00"
duration_seconds: 1830
attendees:
  - "Ana Lopez"
  - "Sam Patel"
speakers:
  - "You"
  - "Speaker 1"
source: mac
summary_backend: claude_code
updated_at: "2026-09-15T10:34:12+01:00"
---

Field	Meaning
`sloth_id`	The meeting's id in the app.
`title`	The meeting title.
`date`	Start time, ISO 8601 with time zone offset.
`duration_seconds`	Recording length in whole seconds.
`attendees`	People attached to the meeting, from the calendar or added by hand.
`speakers`	Speaker labels found in the transcript.
`source`	`mac` for a meeting recorded on this Mac, `import` for imported audio.
`summary_backend`	The provider that wrote the notes, such as `anthropic`, `claude_code`, `chatgpt`, `ollama` or `apple_intelligence`. `null` when there's no generated summary.
`updated_at`	When Sloth last changed the file.

Opening the files

A meeting's … menu (and right-clicking a meeting in the list) has:

Open Notes File and Open Transcript File, which open the Markdown in your default app for .md files.
Show in Finder, which selects the notes file, or the transcript, or the folder if neither exists.

The note header also shows the file's path, such as notes/2026-09-15 1000 Team Standup.md. Click it to open the file; Option-click to show it in Finder.

If an item is greyed out, hover for the reason, such as “File not written yet.” or “Notes folder is off — turn it on in Settings.” If you deleted a file outside Sloth, opening it from the menu writes it again.

Editing the files

You can edit these files. Your edits stay as long as the meeting doesn't change in the app. When it does change, Sloth keeps your edited copy next to the new file as <name> (edited yyyy-MM-dd HHmm).md and never touches that copy again.

Changing the folder

Changing the folder only affects notes written from then on. Files already written stay where they are. Opening or revealing an older meeting's file uses the copy in the old folder while it exists.

Deleting meetings

When you delete a meeting in Sloth, its files move to .trash/notes/ and .trash/transcripts/ inside the Sloth folder. Clear meeting history does the same for every meeting. Sloth doesn't empty .trash; delete those files yourself when you no longer want them.

File safety

A meeting never trashes, overwrites or moves another meeting's file.

Before Sloth replaces, renames or trashes a file, it checks the file belongs to that meeting: its sloth_id must match, or, if you removed the frontmatter, its contents must be what Sloth last wrote for that meeting. A file that belongs to another meeting, or that Sloth didn't write, is left alone, and Sloth picks a free name instead.

Other safeguards:

Every write goes to a temporary file in the same folder first, then replaces the target in one step, so a crash can't leave half a file.
Sloth won't write through a symbolic link or into a subfolder that points outside the Sloth folder.
Sloth only changes files it recorded writing. Its record of those files lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Sloth, outside the folder. If that record gets damaged, Sloth keeps a copy of the damaged version before saving a new one.