Trust · How it works

How local AI works.
And why it’s safer.

"Local AI" sounds like a marketing word. It isn’t — it’s a real architectural choice with real consequences. Here’s what it means inside Kargoo, and why every word of every meeting genuinely never leaves your Mac.

01

The model lives on your Mac.

When you install Kargoo we download Whisper — OpenAI’s open-source speech model — to your disk. After that one download, it never phones home. The model file is yours; transcription runs against it locally.

02

Apple Silicon does the work.

Kargoo runs Whisper on your Neural Engine. A 60-minute meeting transcribes in 2–4 minutes on M2, faster on M3/M4 — without slowing down anything else. No server queue.

03

Files are plain files.

Audio is .m4a. Transcript is .txt. Summary is .md. They sit in a folder you choose. Open them in any editor.

Cloud transcription vs local transcription

Local (Kargoo)Cloud (everyone else)
Where your voice is processedYour Mac’s Neural EngineA datacenter
Number of services that "see" your audio02–5 (recorder, transcriber, summarizer, storage, CDN)
Data-breach exposureYour single machineEvery service in the chain
Subpoena exposureYours aloneThe vendor’s compliance team
Used for AI trainingCannot be — we don’t see itSometimes (read the ToS)
Works on a planeYesNo

What we actually mean by "never leaves your Mac"

What stays on device, always

  • Raw audio recordings
  • Transcripts
  • AI summaries & action items
  • Voice profiles & custom vocabulary
  • Search index over your meetings

What does leave your Mac

  • Anonymous crash reports (opt-in)
  • License-key validation for Pro accounts (no audio, no transcript content)
  • Model updates (we fetch them; nothing about you is sent)

That’s the entire list. No engagement analytics, no audio "improvement" pipeline.

Try it for the next meeting.

Free to download. Free 14-day trial. No account required.

Download for Mac · Free
v1.0 · 12 MB · macOS 13 Ventura+