AI Tools6 min read

How to Record Meetings Without a Bot Using Fellow AI (2026)

Fellow AI lets you record meetings locally without a visible bot joining your calls. Full setup guide: botless recording, custom templates, and Ask Fellow search.

Most AI meeting tools give you one of two bad options: accept the bot joining every call, or lose the recording. My team was dealing with both sides of that problem at the same time.

We were running 20 to 30 meetings a week. Multiple notetaker bots joining the same call. Teammates asking "didn't we already decide this?" while someone else dug through Zoom notes trying to find the answer. And on external calls, the bot joining uninvited just looks unprofessional. None of it was catastrophic, but it added up to a real tax on our team's time and focus.

Fellow AI solves both problems. It records meetings without a visible bot, and it lets you search across your entire team's meeting history to surface decisions, action items, and specific moments. Here's the exact setup I use.

How Botless Recording Actually Works#

The key difference is where the recording happens. Most AI notetakers send a bot into your meeting that records on their servers. Fellow records locally on your machine, then generates the transcript and AI summary from that local audio. No bot in the participant list, no awkward moment when a client notices "Fellow AI" sitting in the call.

This works across Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, and even in-person meetings if you have your laptop open.

To set it up: sign up via the link in the description, install the desktop app (the web interface works but the app is smoother), and connect your Google calendar. Once Fellow can see your calendar, it will surface a "Join and Record" button automatically when a meeting starts.

When you're ready to record without a bot, click "Record Now Botless." You'll see a small indicator that your microphone is capturing audio, but nothing joins the meeting on the other side. You can add talking points, action items, or private notes in the Fellow sidebar while the meeting runs. When you're done, click "Stop and Generate AI Notes" and the transcript and summary are ready within a minute or two.

If you want the bot to join (useful for capturing video or when all participants know it's recording), just click "Join" instead. Fellow drops into the call the traditional way. I love having the optionality of selecting whether or not the bot is visible. For internal team syncs where everyone knows, the bot is fine. For a new client call, botless keeps it clean.

One note: whether you use bot or botless, always tell people they're being recorded. It's not just a legal thing. It's the right thing to do.

Custom Templates That Actually Match Your Meetings#

The default AI summary is useful, but it's generic. A product sync needs different outputs than a sales call, which needs different outputs than a 1-on-1.

Fellow's custom templates let you define exactly what structure you want for each meeting type. You write a prompt, save it as a template, and every time you run AI notes on a matching meeting, it outputs in your format.

I've built 10 of these. The ones I use most:

• Content creator recap for YouTube planning calls
• Podcast prep for interview prep sessions
• Client recap for professional external meetings
• Decision tracker for product and strategy discussions
• Executive summary for anything going up to leadership

To create a template: go to Templates, click the plus button, choose whether it's for your personal workspace or the whole team, give it a name, and write your prompt. You can use Fellow's built-in sections (action items, key decisions, topics discussed) or write a fully custom prompt that outputs exactly the structure you want.

For my executive summary template, I have a single prompt that returns: one-line summary, three key outcomes, what's needed from leadership, bottom line, and timeline. All in one block. Clean, scannable, takes 30 seconds to read.

Once you save and publish, the template shows up in the AI Notes menu for any meeting. Select it, click generate, and the summary rebuilds in your format.

I've put together my full set of custom templates as a free download so you don't have to build them from scratch. Grab them in the description below.

Ask Fellow: Search Across Every Meeting Your Team Has Ever Had#

This is the feature that won me over for team use.

Most AI notetakers let you search or chat within a single transcript. Ask Fellow works across your entire meeting history. Every meeting your whole organization has ever recorded in Fellow is searchable.

You can ask: "In what meeting did we talk about GitLab?" and it finds the exact session, shows you what was decided, and links to the timestamp in the video where it came up. One click and you're watching the 30-second clip instead of reading through pages of notes.

You can also use it for broader queries. "Give me a weekly recap of everything my team discussed this week" generates a full summary across every meeting that ran in Fellow during that period. There's also a "Coach Me" feature that reviews your speaking patterns across calls and gives specific feedback on what's working and where to improve.

For a team that was spending real time re-litigating decisions because nobody could find where they'd been made, this is the thing that changed the workflow.

The Setup Takes Under 10 Minutes#

The full setup (account, desktop app, calendar connection, first botless recording, first custom template) takes less than 10 minutes. The free tier gives you a limited number of AI-processed meetings per month. If you want unlimited AI notes and full Ask Fellow access across your team, it's $20 per user per month.

For context: we were already paying for Zoom, a separate notetaker subscription, and still losing time to the "what did we decide?" problem. Consolidating into Fellow and actually being able to search meeting history has been worth it.

If you want the full breakdown of how Fellow compares to other AI meeting tools, I covered that in my full Fellow AI review.

Try Fellow free at bit.ly/FreeFellowAccount. Download the desktop app. Run your next meeting botless. You'll notice immediately how much cleaner it feels.

Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_k1uiqamwa4

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