Field Recorder
Captures calls and meetings as structured records.
Field Recorder is a Windows tray application. It records both sides of any call: the microphone and the system audio, mixes them into a single capture, and transcribes it on-device into a speaker-attributed, timestamped record. Start and stop with one keystroke from any application. Audio does not leave the machine.
Every record conforms to a published schema, Record Format, Revision 1, designed for retrieval by both people and machines.
| PLATFORM | Windows 10/11, 64-bit |
|---|---|
| CAPTURE | Microphone + system audio (WASAPI loopback), pause/resume, crash recovery |
| TRANSCRIPTION | On-device: whisperX + pyannote.audio. GPU-accelerated when NVIDIA CUDA is present. |
| OFF-DEVICE OPTION | AssemblyAI. Disabled by default. One-time explicit consent. |
| DIARIZATION | Automatic speaker separation; identities assigned by the operator |
| OUTPUT | FLAC audio + JSON record + plain-text transcript, per Record Format Rev. 1 |
| DATA LOCATION | %APPDATA%\BureauOfAppliedScience\records\ — user-visible, no proprietary store |
| RETENTION | Optional policy with per-record hold; deletions logged |
| INTERFACE | System tray; global hotkeys; live session notes; records browser with playback |
| DISTRIBUTION | Self-contained executable. Transcription engine (~3–5 GB) installed on first run. |
| LICENSE | Apache 2.0. Source public. |
On-device transcription is the default and the instrument's identity, not a tier. A conversation is the least public document a business produces; routing it through a third party should be a decision, never a default. When the off-device option is selected, the instrument states plainly that audio will leave the machine, and asks once.
The download is not code-signed. Windows will report an unrecognized application on first run.
The unit of output is not an audio file. It is a record: stable identity, capture context, duration, participants, speaker-attributed segments, legible to a person, addressable by a machine.
{
"record_id": "3fa8c1d2-…",
"format_revision": 1,
"display_name": "Call with the Bureau",
"created_at": "2026-07-16T14:23:00+00:00",
"duration_seconds": 312.4,
"speakers_detected": 2,
"segments": [ … ]
}Full schema: Record Format, Revision 1
Field Recorder v1.0.0 for Windows — release archive · all releases
Source — github.com/erronjason/bas-field-recorder · Apache 2.0
How this instrument came to exist: the case study →