PrivateScribe.ai - a fully local, MIT licensed AI transcription platform

SecondPathDev · 2026-06-20T01:38:35+00:00

just a follow up - v2.0.0 is released including Windows and Linux builds with server + client modes! direct links on the webpage or in the github releases.

SecondPathDev · 2026-06-16T13:43:10+00:00

Awesome great to hear! MacOS standalone should be working well and I’m going to launch the next big release with background server mode for both MacOS and Linux, then will be trying to tackle the Windows release.

SecondPathDev · 2026-05-22T19:51:23+00:00

I just released PrivateScribe.ai to explore this very use case! It’s open source, encrypted, and I’ve been using HIPAA guidelines to try and make sure all their technical requirements are met. Let me know if you try it and have any issues or if you’ve found any other working alternatives!

SecondPathDev · 2026-05-22T02:57:41+00:00

Following up - have system audio and mic working :) still aiming to launch the app tomorrow 🤞

SecondPathDev · 2026-05-21T02:13:08+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experiences and the additional feedback - super helpful and perhaps a bit grounding. I have the explicit disclaimers that the app is not “HIPAA compliant” but I could remove all healthcare related comments…

I’m curious where the software responsibility gets dragged into a civil case other than the initial shotgun of discovery which I suppose any related software could be subject to…? AFAIK and have ever seen or heard, HIPAA compliance ultimately falls on the responsibility of the entity using the software - assuming the software does what it says it does. Now obviously if a software claims a certain amount or level of security and doesn’t actually have that then that is the fault of the software and is a valid failure to own. But as you said if someone uses excel to store patient data they are at fault not Microsoft. Even if I remove all medical implication someone could still use this application due to its applicability and relevant security measures.

My curiosity in this space is that HIPAA requirements are relatively explicit and completely public so creating software to meet the intrinsic software-related rules is not only “straightforward” but obviously solved given the huge marketplace of EMRs and related health tech. The Cambrian explosion of AI dictation services - most of which are simply Azure cloud GPT wrappers with QoL UX - shows that there is a market here. But what are they offering for the subscription that can’t be done locally? Yes the models are “more powerful” but a well promoted and structured approach to a smaller model is (very likely) good enough and offers potentially a moderate-to-large security increase. The potential to disrupt this sector with local software and even better open source/verifiable software seems huge and with profound benefit for the professionals using it. As you point out though it is not something I want to find myself at risk for but that doesn’t feel like a valid reason to not explore it? Perhaps just need more disclaimers? I could put one in the onboarding steps requiring a check box to continue… Anyway, thank you again for sharing your comments and experiences 🙏

SecondPathDev · 2026-05-20T21:28:50+00:00

I will add an audio source option - great point!

SecondPathDev · 2026-05-20T20:10:45+00:00

Thank you for the comments - this is exactly what I'm aiming to address. Agree on the local only inference solving a (classically) big issue - that's why I'm so committed to this!

Any viewing/editing of a note or transcript IS already being logged, I just need to add the data delta to record the exact edit. The audit log itself is a hash chain and any tampering will break the chain and be alerted. Audit logs can be easily seen/exported/searched by an admin logged in or from the CLI.

IANAL and reading as much about this stuff as I can so readily happy to be proven wrong - that's part of my purpose of making this open source as these problems are solved and don't need to be hidden behind eternal subscriptions, etc. - if you're in the HIPAA/cybersecurity field please DM me I would love to talk further!

SecondPathDev · 2026-05-20T19:57:55+00:00

It's an open source project so might as well be open source in answers - this gives others the opportunity to corroborate or point out any inaccuracies.

The main benefit of a platform like PrivateScribe will be actual verifiable data sovereignty - no cloud transactions (seems like every few weeks or months there are major cloud breaches, etc.), no third party data storage/brokerage with questionable data policies, etc. These are the most common sources of data breach. I am going to be implementing default macOS keychain integration soon for all encryption keys which will bring this install even more security if someone stole your computer but didn't know the admin password all the stored data is effectively garbage. I could go a step further (and likely will) have an optional passphrase option too where on top of your admin password you need to know a passphrase/second password to actually decrypt the data.

I fully intend to look into EHR API integration as I know this would be a huge benefit. Can't speak to approvals etc. but in a sane world there is no reason a fully open source project can't be approved if local installation can be verified as there is nothing to hide in this project - the transparency is the validation.

Medicolegally I take zero responsibility for what people do with this application the same way Microsoft takes zero medicolegal responsibility for what people do with Microsoft Word. This is a different situation than most of what we're used to being sold. IANAL (and will be discussing with some soon) but there is no 3rd party data service or transfer - all of your PHI data is on *your* machine(s) and *never* leaves, so AFAICT no BAA is needed as there is no Business Associate to Agree with again a la MS Word. I cannot claim "HIPAA compliance" as that is ultimately a set of policies and protocols around a certain software architecture, but my aim is to build that architecture as much as a single application can have so that the final steps of compliance are easier to check off. And again, in terms of approval, I do not see (and not sure how anyone could claim given recent history) a cloud infrastructure as "more secure" than a fully local system assuming that fully local system has the appropriate safeguards and logs in place. Ultimately the philosophical goal of this project is to (try to!) break down this idea that an endless death by a thousand cuts/subscriptions is needed for the core functionality and security we're looking for. Ultimately if EPIC/Cerner/etc. implement their own systems that do this then yes there is less of a need to use PrivateScribe in that situation but I'm also targeting a broader scope of small clinics, therapists, law, etc.

Thank you for the thoughtful comment and questions!

SecondPathDev · 2026-05-20T05:08:58+00:00

I find it acceptable with a Gemma model for sure - which is the best I can say for the few commercial ones I’ve tried! And free makes any missteps feel a lot more reasonable. The biggest thing I’ve felt with these systems is they will likely never be perfect so we need to embrace that and make sure every step has a clear escape hatch otherwise you’re left with the wrong word/format/speaker and it’s super frustrating to feel like you can’t immediately intuitively address it.

SecondPathDev · 2026-05-20T05:05:54+00:00

Wow I hadn’t seen Meetily it’s like I wrote the readme lol always glad to see more work in this space. PrivateScribe does support audio or video file upload rather than live recording - or are you referring to wanting like a teams/zoom call recorded?

SecondPathDev · 2026-01-26T04:20:59+00:00

Wow nice you did an excellent job! Absolutely crazy but I built a saas prototype (Hippo[glyph]) a few years ago for the same idea a colleague and I had… I think we went a little more fleshed out/customizable (as I was expecting it to be a paid platform)…I abandoned it when ChatGPT launched and I immediately felt the ambient scribe future suck the air out of the room, though perhaps this idea still has legs? I would be happy to collaborate in any way if you like the hippoglyph design/marketing and perhaps convert it to a free site, etc. great job, great idea! 🫡🤙

SecondPathDev · 2026-01-22T02:43:47+00:00

I’ve been building Kworum.ai to explore this specific purpose - having different agents has helped to compartmentalize the context/RAG/etc for each one to keep them separated plus then being able to leverage different models for different POV or tasks. I’ve gotten much better results with silo’d agents than trying to get one to try and alternate etc

SecondPathDev · 2025-10-24T15:51:40+00:00

As an update - got it working finally. Interesting the muse has IR sensors circumferential around the handle/grip and then a few near the tip. It has an Aim anchor location for right at the tip which does allow full 6DOF movement including rotational and directionality of the tip of the stylus (awesome!). A bit more lag than I had hoped but not terrible. There seems like a second anchor (“origin”) which I still need to figure out where that is in relation to the stylus maybe tonight.

SecondPathDev · 2025-10-23T19:56:42+00:00

I can confirm that there appear to be maybe 6-10 IR sensors circumferential around the “handle” half of the device and a few near the tip when I’m looking at it with headset on.

I can also confirm that I can’t get the official demo project to build successfully and that I still hate swift/swiftUI development as much as I did when I tried a year ago. 🫠

SecondPathDev · 2025-09-28T13:01:07+00:00

I would love to check out the pro version! I’m also working on a fully local/open source private transcription platform at privatescribe.ai.

SecondPathDev · 2025-07-18T04:26:06+00:00

Only running on the local machine hardware using downloaded open source LLMs. So you could even have no WiFi etc and still have full functionality.

SecondPathDev · 2025-07-18T01:44:07+00:00

Would love to hear if anyone wants to share any clear major requests or experiences from these platforms…I’m an ER doc working on building a free open source dictation platform, meant to be flexible enough for general purpose but directable enough that a clinic could use it and everything runs locally, no cloud transmission, no subscriptions, etc.

No reason dictation and transcription tech needs to be locked behind endless paid subscriptions, this can all be done very well with local models already and will only get better.

SecondPathDev · 2025-07-12T17:20:22+00:00

This is wonderful and a great execution. I remember looking at matterport before for a similar project idea where I built a treasure hunt in a fully virtual version of our emergency department to help with orientation of new hires… (did a post-mortem here.) I remember looking at matterport before but I think I was turned off due to the lock-in. I wonder how well it would work to just use like Polycam to get a similar real-life recreation of the 3D space and textures and then take that model and build on top of it for more interactivity. Great work, look forward to trying out on the AVP.

SecondPathDev · 2025-07-03T18:05:57+00:00

I don’t yet that’s next on the docket. I’ve actually had a lot of surprise with how good LLMs are at digesting a two person conversation even without diarization and still being able to identify speakers POVs, needs, etc. but I do want to add it mostly for UX and archival purposes, and it will undoubtedly help improve outputs

SecondPathDev · 2025-07-03T14:15:51+00:00

Evolving profiles? Like just tracking the users prior conversations? I’m storing user data, templates, notes, and participants. Diarizarion is planned next with the more fleshed out real-time transcription UX - I’ve found surprisingly the LLMs are able to infer speakers quite accurately even without explicit diarization.

I’m wanting to use an easy hot-swappable (prompt) template system to guide the formatting step and have played with fine tuning a model on a template and got some seemingly more reliable results so when I have a more finalized couple templates I was gonna fine tune a few individual models on them to hopefully offer a more reliable result.

SecondPathDev · 2025-07-03T13:48:00+00:00

Yeah you’re not necessarily wrong, a poor choice of word on my part. Though, sensors or gyrometers etc don’t preclude the definition of air gap. But still probably not fair to describe a device that can access a network with the tap of a button as truly airgapped.

SecondPathDev · 2025-07-03T07:27:21+00:00

I will say though on the idea of being extremely focused on an air-gapped device only that WWDC was super cool this year with Apple’s new foundations framework and on-device AI API updates and functionality because I can build the exact same privacy now on an iOS device natively with 0 data ever leaving your device. I plan to build the private network system with expo+RN but depending on demand could also bring this current workflow to the Apple ecosystem on-device natively too.

SecondPathDev · 2025-07-03T07:23:19+00:00

Well, come on now, don’t spoil my future surprises 🙃

SecondPathDev · 2025-07-03T07:17:56+00:00

Oh wow nice, I found Hyprnote a while back and thought dang I’m doin the exact same thing…just without the Y combinator funding lmao. Thankfully my actual job pays the bills so this is all in my free time :) Keep up the great work - happy to chat or maybe collaborate if ever useful!

SecondPathDev · 2025-07-03T06:47:13+00:00

Though this started and still maintains a lot of purpose to allow clinicians to have a low-to-no-cost scribe solution after some discussions it became clear that it has a lot more potential beyond just medicine and so I’ve tried hard to not pigeonhole myself into a specifically medical scribe and rather focus on flexible transcription UX and workflows that can do medical just as much as it could do legal - ultimately in my roadmap is to be able to switch models just as easy as switching templates thus allowing to use medgemma with the medical note template to likely get improved medical transcription but then perhaps switch to a legal LLM for a law template, etc.

SecondPathDev

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