Live Captions and Live Notes
Chapter 4: Live Captions and Live Notes
Two things happen in the side panel while you're recording that make the extension more than a pure recorder: live captions stream in as speakers talk, and live notes let you type alongside them and ship what you wrote up with the audio.
Live captions
The captions come from SeaMeet's live speech-to-text service. The extension streams the tab's audio out to the service and streams caption segments back in, appended to the transcript panel as they arrive.
What you'll see:
- Timestamped segments (
[00:03:12]prefixes) showing when each caption started. - Speaker labels once SeaMeet has recognised distinct voices — typically after the first minute of the meeting.
- A short delay between spoken word and printed caption — usually 1–3 seconds — because the service works on rolling windows of audio.
When captions won't come:
- The service is temporarily unavailable — the panel shows a Retry captions button pinned above the transcript so you can restart the stream without scrolling to find it. This exists because in a long meeting the retry button could scroll out of view.
- The tab is muted or has no audio at all.
- You're offline. Live captions are a cloud service; the recording itself keeps going, and the transcript is regenerated from the audio after upload.
Jumping to the latest caption. In a long meeting you'll scroll back to re-read something and lose the tail. A Jump to latest pill appears near the bottom of the transcript pane whenever you've scrolled up — click it to snap back. (It used to say "Resume" but that was too easily confused with recording Pause/Resume, so it was renamed.)
Live notes (signed-in users)
The notes card appears below the transcript in the side panel, but only when you're signed in. There's a reason — the notes upload with the recording, and unsigned recordings have no server-side identity to attach the notes to.
What you can type:
Plain markdown. There is a small insert-only toolbar for the three most common bits of formatting:
- Bold (
**bold**) - Italic (
*italic*) - Bullet list (
- item)
Anything more complex — headings, tables, code — write in markdown by hand and it will render correctly in the preview and in the uploaded notes.
Timestamp tokens. Type [mm:ss] (for example, [02:15]) and it becomes a clickable timestamp that shares the captions' clock. In the uploaded meeting, these become links that jump the player to that moment. Type them in-line as you take notes — "[04:22] decision to defer Q3 rollout" — and future-you will thank present-you.
Read-only preview. Below the editor, the same content renders as it will appear after upload. This is where the toolbar's markdown becomes real formatting.
The draggable divider. A horizontal handle between the transcript and the notes lets you trade their heights. If you're mostly reading captions, drag notes down; if you're mostly writing, drag it up.
What happens to the notes when the recording stops
When you press Stop:
- The draft is written as the Notes section of the recording, before the transcription.
- The recording — audio + notes — uploads to
app.seameet.ai. - The AI summary runs, and because notes come before the transcript in the input, the summary includes your notes as first-class context. What you wrote actually shapes the summary.
What happens to the notes when things go wrong
The notes draft is stored in the browser's IndexedDB the whole time you're typing. That means:
- Closing the side panel mid-recording is safe. Reopen it; the notes are still there.
- Closing the tab is safe as long as it isn't the recording tab. If it is, see Chapter 6 on recovery.
- Deleting a local recording that has unuploaded notes shows a warning: "This will discard the notes too." You have to confirm.
Nothing is written to the cloud until the recording stops and uploads.
When notes are the wrong tool
The extension's notes are deliberately simple. If you want:
- Wikilinks, quick-open, drag-drop media, or a full editor with a slash menu — that's the desktop app's notes surface. See the desktop manual, Chapter 17.
- A separate note-taking app (Notion, Obsidian, Apple Notes) — take notes there and let the extension record the audio. The AI summary will still be strong; you just lose the "notes before transcript" boost.
Quick Reference
| Task | How |
|---|---|
| Retry captions if they stop | Retry captions banner above the transcript |
| Return to the live tail after scrolling | Jump to latest pill |
| Insert a timestamp linked to the recording | Type [mm:ss] in the notes |
| Bold / italic / list in notes | Insert-only toolbar above the notes editor |
| Trade transcript / notes height | Drag the horizontal handle between them |
Last updated: 2026-08-27
← Chapter 3: Recording a Meeting | Chapter 5: Sign In and Sync to the Web App →
Published: