Grain
Records meetings, creates clips, summaries, and searchable customer insight
The visible meeting clips + intelligence loop is buildable, but a credible replacement needs more than the first screen. Grain earns its keep through capture, integrations, reliability, so expect a weekend or multi-day build and a narrower personal scope.
Build verification: not recorded. How we judge buildability
What you give up
- live multi-speaker accuracy
- calendar and CRM integrations
- cross-call team analytics
- meeting-bot auto-join
Why people still pay
Grain: Customers pay for automatic capture, dependable speaker handling, search across calls, and notes arriving without manual file wrangling.
Your build guide
The stack, security requirements, and agent rules for a focused replacement.
Before you start
- Runtime and tools: Python, FastAPI, SQLite, FFmpeg and a local faster-whisper worker with a React transcript editor.
- Before starting: An installed speech model, adequate local disk space and a recording made with participant permission; any optional hosted model needs a separately disclosed API key.
Use these project rules and optional skill references alongside the prompt. Review each skill before adding it to your agent; the AGENTS.md export includes the same guidance.
Project rule — domain: Store Call, Utterance, ClipRange, ThemeTag and Reel; clips keep source timestamps and labels, and private-call access follows the clip as well as the full recording.
Project rule — scope and recovery: Manual speaker labels and clip previews come first. Automatic sentiment is not evidence of a deal outcome, and optional generated deal notes require quote-backed human review.
Project rule — acceptance: Correct an utterance, move a clip boundary and revoke sharing; the rendered clip uses the reviewed range and its former share link stops working.
Project rule — delivery: document real setup commands and permissions; do not claim a build, accuracy level, performance result or security certification that has not been demonstrated.
Recommended skill: modern-python — structure the Python worker or explicitly optional read-only utility with pinned dependencies, typed boundaries and clear failure handling. Follow the maintainer's installation instructions and match its requirements to the chosen runtime.
Recommended skill: web-design-guidelines — review keyboard access, focus, validation, error recovery and the readable work/review interface or HTML report. Follow the maintainer's installation instructions and match its requirements to the chosen runtime.
Implementation plan
Phase 1
Pin the working slice and create its example input: Import a customer call, select transcript passages to make short clips and assemble a reviewed evidence reel of objections and customer needs. Confirm setup: An installed speech model, adequate local disk space and a recording made with participant permission; any optional hosted model needs a separately disclosed API key.
Phase 2
Implement persistence and write-time invariants before decorating the UI: Store Call, Utterance, ClipRange, ThemeTag and Reel; clips keep source timestamps and labels, and private-call access follows the clip as well as the full recording.
Phase 3
Connect the working view to real saved state. Keep original timing alongside corrected text. Speech recognition does not itself establish speaker identity; permit manual speaker labels. Show undecodable audio and uncertain passages without inventing words.
Phase 4
Expose the app-specific limits and recovery path in context: Manual speaker labels and clip previews come first. Automatic sentiment is not evidence of a deal outcome, and optional generated deal notes require quote-backed human review.
Phase 5
Walk through this concrete acceptance case and preserve its exported evidence: Correct an utterance, move a clip boundary and revoke sharing; the rendered clip uses the reviewed range and its former share link stops working. Finish the README and backup/restore instructions; report unfinished capabilities explicitly.
Build the following focused alternative to Grain. This is a deliberately limited personal or small-team substitute, not parity with the paid service. WORKING SLICE Import a customer call, select transcript passages to make short clips and assemble a reviewed evidence reel of objections and customer needs. SETUP AND ARCHITECTURE Use Python, FastAPI, SQLite, FFmpeg and a local faster-whisper worker with a React transcript editor. Prerequisites: An installed speech model, adequate local disk space and a recording made with participant permission; any optional hosted model needs a separately disclosed API key. Before integrating anything, record actual versions and permissions, plus model files or provider limits only where used, in the README; make unavailable dependencies visible rather than simulating success. DOMAIN MODEL AND INVARIANTS Store Call, Utterance, ClipRange, ThemeTag and Reel; clips keep source timestamps and labels, and private-call access follows the clip as well as the full recording. IMPLEMENTATION CONTRACT Keep original timing alongside corrected text. Speech recognition does not itself establish speaker identity; permit manual speaker labels. Show undecodable audio and uncertain passages without inventing words. Provide an input/setup view, the main work view, and a review/export view appropriate to this workflow. Preserve the last saved state if a job or save fails. Include empty, loading, permission-denied, partial and retryable-error states. Log identifiers and error categories without secret values or unnecessary private content. APP-SPECIFIC BOUNDARY AND RECOVERY Manual speaker labels and clip previews come first. Automatic sentiment is not evidence of a deal outcome, and optional generated deal notes require quote-backed human review. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIO Correct an utterance, move a clip boundary and revoke sharing; the rendered clip uses the reviewed range and its former share link stops working. Also reopen the app after an interrupted operation, confirm the saved record/export remains inspectable, and document the recovery action. These are implementation acceptance requirements, not a claim that this guide has been tested. DELIVERY Deliver a runnable repository with migrations or project-format versioning, a non-sensitive example, environment/permission setup, the exact manual acceptance steps, and a backup/export-and-restore walkthrough. Implement the working slice before optional integrations; list any deferred paid-product capabilities honestly. Do not add capabilities outside the working slice just to resemble the original product. PROJECT RULES FOR AGENTS.md Keep the domain invariants above executable at the write boundary. Propose scope changes before adding providers or permissions. Never fabricate source evidence, publish results, identity matches or successful delivery. Preserve user originals and require an explicit confirmation for destructive changes or external publication.
$ open in your agent (prompt prefilled, you press enter), copy the prompt or copy or download AGENTS.md
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Grain pricing
| plan | monthly | annual (per mo) | what you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| free | $0/workspace | $0/workspace | 1 free Notetaker seat per workspace; unlimited recordings up to 45 minutes each; personal-email accounts can record 20 meetings before upgrade; unlimited viewer seats.Uploads are not included. |
| starter | $19/user | $15/user | Unlimited meeting recording and storage; 10 file uploads per month; API and integrations.Only users who record require paid seats; all paid seats in a workspace must use the same tier. |
| business | $39/user | $29/user | Unlimited meetings plus conversation/revenue intelligence, coaching, trackers, custom follow-ups, CRM/dialer workflows, and MCP.Only users who record require paid seats; all paid seats in a workspace must use the same tier. |
| enterprise | — | — | Custom enterprise security and administration; no public numeric price or limits.Contact sales. |
free tier1 Notetaker seat per workspace; recordings are unlimited but capped at 45 minutes each; personal-email accounts can record 20 meetings before upgrade; unlimited viewers.
billingmonthly + annual; added paid seats are prorated
hidden costsEvery recording user needs a paid seat and all paid seats in one workspace must be on the same tier. After downgrade, meetings owned by users beyond the single free Notetaker can be deleted after 30 days.
pricing sources checked 2026-08-14 · pricing source ↗
Questions about Grain
Can you build your own Grain with AI?
Partly. The visible meeting clips + intelligence loop is buildable, but a credible replacement needs more than the first screen. Grain earns its keep through capture, integrations, reliability, so expect a weekend or multi-day build and a narrower personal scope.
What does the Grain build prompt cover?
The prompt starts with this scope: Import a customer call, select transcript passages to make short clips and assemble a reviewed evidence reel of objections and customer needs. Full-product capabilities excluded from the comparison include: live multi-speaker accuracy; calendar and CRM integrations; cross-call team analytics. Follow the implementation plan and its prerequisites before expanding the build.
How do I use the prompt, AGENTS.md and agent skills?
Start with the Grain prerequisites and stack, then copy the prompt into your coding agent. Save the project rules as AGENTS.md in the project root. Linked skills are optional packages or source instructions for specific tasks; review their current contents and install only those matching the chosen stack. A skill does not supply API credentials or verify the finished app.
How long will this Grain project take?
The catalogue estimate is multi-day for the limited scope. Setup, integration approvals, debugging, deployment and ongoing maintenance can add time. This is an estimate, not a delivery guarantee.
What would I give up by replacing Grain?
live multi-speaker accuracy; calendar and CRM integrations; cross-call team analytics; meeting-bot auto-join. Grain: Customers pay for automatic capture, dependable speaker handling, search across calls, and notes arriving without manual file wrangling.
What can I use instead of building Grain?
Fathom: Records calls, makes clips, writes basic summaries and searches the archive; deeper customer-intelligence workflows still cost money. Check each option's license, hosting needs and feature limits.