MacParsleySummaries and mind maps
Summaries
A summary is written from a meeting's transcript by an AI model (see AI models and privacy). By default one is written automatically after a recording is transcribed.
Prompts
How a summary is written depends on its prompt: instructions for a kind of recording. MacParsley comes with over 60, in these categories:
General · Meetings · Calls · Interviews · Education · Media · Sales · Medical · Legal & Technical · Field Work · Personal · Lenses · Rewrite
Examples: Meeting Notes, Incident Report, Podcast Notes, Sales Call Review, Interview Debrief, Lecture Notes. Lenses look at a recording from one angle (key quotes, decisions…); Rewrite turns it into another form.
Automatic choice. Unless you choose one, MacParsley reads the start of the recording and picks the prompt that fits. When it isn't sure, it uses a general prompt, Adaptive Summary by default. You can pick a different fallback.
Settings → Prompts lets you:
- browse prompts by category;
- turn Auto-detect this category off, or take single prompts out of automatic choice (you can still pick them by hand);
- choose the fallback prompt;
- Duplicate a built-in prompt to make your own version, or write a new one (your prompts are saved as text files in
~/Library/Application Support/MacParsley/Prompts, shared by all libraries). Built-in prompts can be read in full (scroll and copy) but not changed; use Duplicate & Edit.
To write one, see Writing your own prompts.
A prompt marked Sensitive (medical, for example) makes MacParsley ask before sending the transcript to a cloud model.
Styles
When you summarize by hand you can also choose a style, which changes the length and voice but not the layout of the prompt:
| Style | |
|---|---|
| Standard | The prompt as written. |
| Concise | Shorter: only the points that matter most. |
| Detailed | Longer: keeps supporting detail, examples and figures. |
| Executive Brief | A short brief for someone who reads only the top: the bottom line first, then decisions, risks and next steps with owners. Under a page. |
| Narrative | Flowing prose instead of bullet lists, telling what happened in order. |
Summarize again
Summarize (⇧⌘S, or Resummarize… on the Summary tab) opens a window where you choose a prompt (or Automatic), a style, and a model. The new summary is added as a version; the current one is kept. Use it to compare prompts or models.
The Summary tab also has Identify Speakers… (or Speakers…), the same button as on the Transcript tab. Use it to name people without switching tabs; the names then flow into the summary.
The model menu also offers the services that are set up: Plaud, Pocket, Fireflies.ai and note1.ai. They work from the recording's audio, not the transcript: there's no prompt or style to choose, the audio is sent, and their summary arrives as a new version. With Fireflies you can tick extra sections for that meeting. See Summaries written from the audio.
Under the summary's title a line shows how it was made: the prompt's name, whether it was Detected (MacParsley chose the prompt) or Chosen by you, the style if it isn't Standard, and the model and time. When there is more than one version, the … menu on the Summary tab lists them. Open an older one to read it; a banner then offers Make Default, which makes it the summary shown everywhere else: in the folder overview, the exported summary.md and PDF, mind maps, searches and sharing. A version you no longer want can be deleted from the same menu.
If people have been named since a summary was written, a banner says so, and one click updates the names in it.
Where the model comes from
For each summary, in this order:
- the model you chose in the Summarize window;
- the model set on the meeting's folder (Edit Folder → Summarization);
- the Summarization Model in Settings → Summaries.
The same goes for the prompt: yours, then the folder's Meeting Type, then the automatic choice.
Summaries written from the audio
Fireflies.ai, Pocket, Plaud and note1.ai can write a summary from a recording's audio instead of a model reading the transcript. Choose one as the Summarization Model in Settings → Summaries, or for one meeting in Resummarize or in the Import window. Their summaries come in their own layout, so prompts and styles don't apply. While a service works, a strip under the meeting's title says so, with a moving bar; it can take several minutes, and everything else carries on meanwhile. If the service is only writing the summary, the meeting is transcribed on your Mac at the same time (and its speakers matched by voice), so the transcript is usually ready first; the summary then arrives with the speakers' names in it. If the service writes no summary, one is written on your Mac instead. Plaud doesn't take very short recordings (under a minute or so); those are summarized on your Mac. See Fireflies.ai, Pocket, Plaud and note1.ai.
Long recordings
Very long recordings are summarized in pieces, and the pieces are joined into one document. MacParsley can use a larger model on your Mac for these if you allow it (Settings → Summaries).
Titles
With Automatically name new meetings on, a recording that only has a file name gets a written title, once the transcript or summary is available. Renaming a meeting yourself stops it from being renamed again.
Summaries that come from a service
A summary from Plaud, Pocket, Fireflies or note1 is kept as a version labelled with the service's name. See Plaud and Pocket, Fireflies.ai and note1.ai.
Pictures in summaries
A summary can show pictures (Plaud's infographics, for example). Click one to open it at full size. The pictures are saved under Attachments, and included in PDFs and printouts.
Mind maps
Every meeting with a summary has two mind maps on its Mind Map tab:
| Map | How it's made |
|---|---|
| Concise | An AI model reads the summary and writes a short version of the map (4 to 7 main branches). The meeting's date, attendees and keywords come straight from the summary. |
| Detailed | Every heading and bullet of the summary, drawn exactly. It's never stored, so it can't go out of date. |
On the tab:
- Switch between Concise and Detailed at the top. It opens on the concise one when there is one.
- Zoom, Fit, and fold or unfold branches by clicking them. The fold and unfold buttons do everything at once.
- The … menu has Write the Concise Version with AI, Save as PNG… and Copy Image.
- If the summary changed after the concise map was written, a notice says so and offers Write Again.
Both maps are also saved as pictures in the meeting's folder (mindmap-concise.png and mindmap-detailed.png) and can be shared or printed. Turn the concise map off for new summaries in Settings → Summaries → Write a concise mind map with each summary. If the model couldn't make a concise map, the tab says so and offers a button to try again; the detailed map is always there.