Same goal, opposite defaults
Fireflies and Cloak both want to free you from frantic note-taking. Fireflies does it by sending a bot into your meeting and storing the recording and transcript in its cloud. Cloak does it from your own machine, with no bot in the room and no Cloak-side recording — and it also helps you during the call, not only after.
Where Cloak differs
No meeting bot
There's no "Fred" or notetaker joining the participant list. Cloak listens to system audio locally, so attendees never see a third party in the call.
Local-first storage
Transcripts and notes live on your Mac. Only the text you prompt against goes to the AI provider you chose — your own key, or a managed plan. Nothing is retained on Cloak's servers by default.
Live, not just retrospective
Beyond the summary, Cloak drafts answers in real time from an invisible overlay — objection handling, exact phrasing, a recap if you joined late — which a pure recorder can't do.
Open source and BYOK
The desktop client is open source, and the free tier is bring-your-own-key forever. You're not renting access to a transcript you already recorded.
When Fireflies still wins
If you specifically want a hosted system of record that auto-joins every calendar meeting, stores every recording centrally, and integrates with a long list of CRMs out of the box, a cloud notetaker fits that shape better today. Choose Cloak when ownership, privacy, and live help matter more than a central cloud archive.
Related
See also Otter alternative, the AI note taker, and the AI meeting assistant.