Meeting notes · checked 2026-10-19

Can I vibecode Fathom?

KINDA· weekend project

Fathom's core is a transcript and a summary of a call, and a local app on whisper.cpp or faster-whisper plus any language model does that in an afternoon from a recording on disk. The weekend goes into what makes Fathom feel automatic: recording that starts by itself from a calendar event, capturing every participant on Zoom, Meet and Teams, putting names on the lines, and a link with highlights you can send. Joining calls as a bot needs a meeting-bot service or a headless browser per platform, while capturing your own machine's audio only works on the computer you are sitting at. Since the free plan already records without limits, building your own mainly buys control over where the audio goes.

$20/moprice per seat

$240you'd save a year

weekendbuild time

—people replaced it

Before you start

What you need on hand.

DifficultyIntermediate · Some system setup or keys.

TimeA weekend; automatic capture is the slow part

Claude Code, Codex or CursorAny of them can run the prompt.
Python 3.11 and ffmpegfaster-whisper downloads its model on first run.
A language model endpointA hosted API key, or Ollama running on your own machine.
A way to get recordings onto diskZoom's local recording, or any recorder that saves to the inbox folder.

Before you buildFathom Free already records and transcribes without limits and gives advanced summaries on five calls a month. If that is enough, you may not need to pay or build anything.

1. Install one agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.
2. Make an empty folder and open it in the agent.
3. Paste the prompt below, press enter, and answer its questions as it builds.

The prompt

Build me a local call-notes tool to replace Fathom for recordings I already have on disk. Requirements:

- Python 3.11 FastAPI backend with a server-rendered UI (Jinja2 + htmx). `./run.sh` serves
http://127.0.0.1:4730. ffmpeg must be on the PATH; exit with a clear message if not.
- Intake: watch ~/Calls/inbox/ for new mp4, m4a, wav and webm files (the folder Zoom, Meet or my
recorder saves into). Move each into ./data/calls/<id>/ and extract 16 kHz mono audio.
- Transcription: faster-whisper with word timestamps (model from .env, default `small`). If the
recording has separate audio tracks, transcribe each and label the lines "Me" and "Them".
- Storage: SQLite (`sqlite3` with FTS5) in ./data/calls.db: calls, transcript segments, notes and
action items. Search across all transcripts and notes from a box at the top.
- Notes: send the transcript to an OpenAI-compatible endpoint (LLM_BASE_URL, LLM_MODEL,
LLM_API_KEY in .env; local Ollama works). Return a three-sentence summary, decisions, action
items with owner and due date when mentioned, and a follow-up email draft, as JSON validated
with `pydantic`; retry once on invalid JSON.
- Call page: audio player, clickable transcript, the notes, and a button to save a highlight
(start and end) that exports an mp3 clip with ffmpeg.
- Export: each call as Markdown to ~/Calls/notes/YYYY-MM-DD-<title>.md with notes on top and the
transcript below.
- Single user. No accounts, no telemetry, local-first; the only outbound call is the LLM endpoint.
- Out of scope: joining calls, live capture, CRM sync, team sharing, speaker names beyond "Me" and
"Them".
- README: how to make Zoom save recordings to the inbox folder, and a reminder to tell people when
you record them.

Opens your agent with the prompt filled in, you press enter. Or copy it and paste it into an empty folder.

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Then keep going

Next prompts, same folder.

The first prompt builds the core. Run these one at a time in the same folder to grow it into your own Fathom.

Add speaker labelling to the call-notes tool in this folder. Requirements:

- Use `pyannote.audio` diarization on calls that have a single mixed audio track; read the
  Hugging Face token from .env and explain the model licence step in the README.
- Show the speakers as "Speaker 1", "Speaker 2" and let me rename each once per call; saving a
  name stores a voice embedding so the next call suggests the same name.
- Re-run note generation after renaming so action items use the real names.
- Keep the "Me" and "Them" path for recordings with separate tracks.
- Update the README.

Add calendar matching to the call-notes tool in this folder. Requirements:

- Read a private Google or iCloud calendar ICS URL from CALENDAR_ICS_URL in .env and cache it
  for 15 minutes.
- For each new call, find the event overlapping its start time and use its title and attendee
  names for the call title, the note file name and the summary prompt.
- If no event matches, keep the file name and ask nothing.
- Update the README.

Add an action-item digest to the call-notes tool in this folder. Requirements:

- A checkbox on every action item, saved in SQLite, and a page listing everything open grouped
  by call.
- A command `digest` that writes a Markdown list of open items older than 3 days to
  ~/Calls/digest.md and prints it.
- A cron example in the README that runs it on Monday at 9:00.
- No email, no external services.

What you lose

A recorder that joins on its own from your calendar
Speaker names on every line, taken from the meeting platform
Shareable links with clips, playlists and comments for your team
CRM sync to HubSpot, Salesforce or Close, and Zapier triggers
Search across the whole team's calls, scorecards and coaching metrics

Why people still pay

Nobody wants to remember to press record. Fathom shows up on the calendar event, writes notes before the next call starts and can push them into the CRM, so the value is in doing nothing. The paid plan lifts the five-call cap on advanced summaries and adds action items and follow-up drafts.

Moatintegrations execution polish

Do the math

Fathom or your own copy?

Seats

Over

Your usage

Count my time12h ×$/h

Fathom, 1 yr$240

Your own copy, 1 yr$68running + build session

You keep$173pays for itself in the first month

Estimate · Transcription runs on your machine. The only running cost is language model tokens for summaries: a few cents per hour of calls on a small hosted model, nothing with Ollama. The build is token usage on your agent plan.

Leaving Fathom

Take your data, then cancel.

1 · Take your data out of Fathom

1Transcripts: open a recorded call and press Copy Transcript above the transcript. Fathom copies the text to your clipboard; the help article describes no file download, so paste each transcript into a file straight away.
2Summaries and action items are shown beside the transcript. We found no bulk export, so copy the ones you need call by call.
3Recordings: the help article on transcripts doesn't cover video or audio downloads. If you need the files, ask help@fathom.video before you cancel.

2 · Cancel Fathom

1Open Settings in Fathom and scroll to Premium Features.
2Click Downgrade to Free, or go straight to fathom.video/manage_subscription/billing.
3Click Cancel Plan to finish. Premium continues to the end of the billing date and no further charges are attempted.
4Team plans are cancelled through success@fathom.video. To end a plan immediately, email help@fathom.video.

Free keeps unlimited recording and storage, but you lose AI action items, follow-up emails, custom summaries and Ask Fathom, and advanced summaries drop to five calls a month.
The cancel article doesn't say what happens to older Premium-only content, so copy out what matters first.
The pricing page shows a 90 day guarantee on paid plans, but the cancel article doesn't mention refunds: ask help@fathom.video before relying on it.
Whatever replaces Fathom, tell people when you record them. A homemade recorder needs the same consent as the bot.

Checked 2026-10-19 against Fathom's docs: 1, 2, 3, 4

The escape hatch

Don't feel like building it? These are already free.

MeetilyOpen sourceMIT desktop recorder with local Whisper or Parakeet transcription, speaker separation and Ollama summaries; some extras sit in a paid edition.★ 32k · active Sep 2026 · one-click install
macOS, WindowsVisit ↗AnarlogOpen sourceMIT Mac app that records and transcribes on the device and lets you pick the model behind the notes.★ 9.5k · active Oct 2026 · one-click install
macOSVisit ↗VexaOpen sourceApache-2.0 API with auto-join bots for Google Meet, Teams and Zoom and real-time transcripts; the closest to Fathom's bot approach.★ 2.9k · active Oct 2026 · docker to self-host
serverVisit ↗

All 5 free alternatives to Fathom ›

The numbers

Fathom pricing

Plan	Monthly	Annual, per month	What you get
Free	$0/user	$0/user	Unlimited recordings and transcription, bot or bot-free (Mac beta) capture, instant AI call summaries, clips and playlists.
Premium	$20/user	$16/user	Everything in Free plus advanced summaries on every call, AI action items, a conversational assistant and a custom meeting bot.
Team	$19/user	$15/user	Everything in Premium plus search across all calls, team playlists, comments, folders and keyword alerts.
Business	$34/user	$25/user	Everything in Team plus CRM field sync, Deal View, coaching metrics, AI scorecards and custom call summaries.
Enterprise	custom	—	Everything in Business plus SSO and SCIM, organization-wide security controls, custom data retention and a dedicated success manager.

Free tier: Advanced summaries are limited to the first five calls a month; after that only the general template is used. Recording, storage and transcription (38 languages) are unlimited.
Billing: Monthly or annual per user; annual is marked as saving 25% or more. Team and Business need at least 2 users. The page shows a 90 day guarantee on the paid plans and free trials on Premium, Team and Business. Prices carry a dollar sign and no currency code.
Hidden costs: The free plan's five advanced summaries a month run out fast if you take many calls. CRM sync is included on both Free and Premium for up to 3 users per email domain; field-level CRM sync and Deal View are Business-only.
Source: fathom.ai

Also on the list

Granola$14/mo · Meeting notesYES

Descript$24/mo · Audio & videoKINDA

Superwhisper$8.49/mo · DictationYES

Questions

Fathom, briefly

Not answered here? Tell us and we'll add it.

Ask a question ›

Free covers unlimited recording, storage and transcription, with advanced AI summaries on your first five calls each month.

Kinda. The core is a weekend build with the prompt on this page, but real gaps remain: A recorder that joins on its own from your calendar, Speaker names on every line, taken from the meeting platform.

About $20 a month on the Premium plan per seat, $240 a year (checked 2026-10-19).

A recorder that joins on its own from your calendar; Speaker names on every line, taken from the meeting platform; Shareable links with clips, playlists and comments for your team; CRM sync to HubSpot, Salesforce or Close, and Zapier triggers; Search across the whole team's calls, scorecards and coaching metrics. If any of those matter to you, keep paying.