Privacy Policy

Your meetings stay yours

Commander Brief does not receive or store your meetings on its own servers. Recordings and notes are saved on your Mac in the folder you choose. AI processing goes directly from your Mac to your chosen OpenAI API account.

Recording and your permission

Commander Brief records microphone audio and, with macOS permission, system audio when you start a recording. Recording controls and the menu-bar indicator show recording state. Before recording or AI processing, the app asks for your agreement. You are responsible for obtaining any necessary permission from other participants.

OpenAI processing

Audio is sent directly from your Mac to OpenAI for transcription using your API key. Transcript text is sent to OpenAI to create meeting titles, summaries and action items. Your key is stored in the macOS Keychain. OpenAI usage is charged to your API account. Commander Brief does not operate a server that receives your meeting content.

Screen context

When enabled, Commander Brief captures settled screen changes during recording and sends selected images and extracted text to OpenAI with meeting context. Newer versions enable this after setup consent and automatically prefer detected presentations, falling back to the visible display; version 2.3 uses optional window capture, off by default. Images can include unrelated windows or camera tiles. The model is instructed to retain relevant meeting details and ignore faces and unrelated content; this does not remove them from submitted images or guarantee perfect filtering. You can turn screen context off in Settings.

Local files and retention

Recordings, transcripts, summaries and presentation metadata are stored in the folder you choose. Pending images are deleted after successful processing; images from failed batches remain locally for retry. You can delete meetings in the app or manage retained files in your folder. Deleting a transcript does not necessarily delete retained audio or logs, so review the Recordings and Logs folders when removing all copies. Your own backup or cloud-sync settings may create additional copies.

AI provider retention

OpenAI does not use API content to train its models by default. Its audio transcription endpoint lists no retained audio content. For summaries and image understanding, OpenAI may keep submitted content in abuse-monitoring logs for up to 30 days by default, with exceptions described in its data policy. Commander Brief disables optional storage of chat completions; this does not disable abuse-monitoring logs. Approved account-level data controls may reduce retention.

Local search and MCP integrations

Sidebar search runs locally. The app maintains a derived copy of transcripts, summaries and presentation metadata in its macOS App Group container for the bundled MCP server. If you connect an AI client to that server, the client can retrieve meeting content. Any subsequent use or transmission is governed by that client and its provider. Configure only clients you trust; removing their MCP configuration stops that access.

Your choices

You can turn off shared-content capture and withdraw recording/OpenAI-processing permission in Settings. Withdrawal blocks new recordings and AI requests; requests already sent may finish. Saved notes remain available. macOS Settings controls microphone and screen-recording permissions separately. The app does not use meeting content for advertising or cross-app tracking and includes no third-party analytics SDK.

Policy updates

This policy was updated September 5, 2026 for meeting notes and optional shared content. Material changes to how the app sends meeting content will be disclosed before the changed processing is enabled.

Contact and provider information

For privacy questions, contact hello@commanderbrief.com.

OpenAI API data controls