Granola

What it is

Granola is a desktop notepad that listens to your computer’s audio during a call and merges what was said with the shorthand you jot down. There’s no bot that joins the meeting — it captures quietly in the background, then rewrites your scrappy notes into a clean summary with decisions and action items the moment the call ends. For PMs it’s built for the meetings you’re personally in: discovery calls, 1:1s, stakeholder syncs.

Our verdict

Our pick for this category. The no-bot approach is the whole point: nobody sees a “Granola Notetaker has joined” banner, so it works for sensitive discovery and exec conversations where a visible recorder changes the room. The output is genuinely better than transcript-summarizers because it anchors on your notes — it knows what you thought was important — instead of guessing from a raw transcript. Action items come out with clear owners, and the built-in chat lets you ask “what did we decide about pricing?” across every meeting.

Where it falls short: because it captures your machine’s audio, it’s built for calls you’re on, not a delegate that joins meetings for you — and the free tier caps you at 25 notes of history, so any serious daily use pushes you to the Business plan fast.

Get value in 10 minutes

1. Install the desktop app and grant microphone/system-audio permission (it needs to hear both sides of the call).
2. Start your next call. In the Granola panel, type shorthand as you go — just fragments, “decision: ship mobile first”, “AI risk — check w/ legal”.
3. When the call ends, hit Enhance. Granola merges your notes with the transcript into a structured summary.
4. Pick a template — set the note template to “Action items + decisions + open questions” so every meeting comes out in the same shape.
5. Open the chat and ask: “List every action item with an owner and a due date if one was mentioned.” Copy that block straight into your tracker.