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Running Daisy fully offline

Daisy already does the heavy lifting on your own computer: recording, transcription, and speaker diarization all run locally. The one piece that normally reaches the internet is the summary step. This article covers the two ways to keep that local too.

(Aside from the AI step, Daisy's only network touches are a periodic license check, update checks, and activation — never your meetings.)

Pick how summaries are produced

You have three choices for the summary step. The first two keep it fully local:

  • Local AI server (advanced) — point Daisy at LM Studio or Ollama running on your own machine or network. Setup details below.
  • Skip and use copy-paste — keep transcripts only, paste them into your own ChatGPT or Claude when you want a summary. No setup, no per-meeting cost, no key.
  • Cloud provider with your own key — Groq, OpenAI, or Anthropic. Best summary quality, but the transcript text (not your audio) is sent to the provider over HTTPS with your key.

Set up a local AI server (advanced)

Daisy hands summarization off to any OpenAI-compatible local server. The two supported options are LM Studio and Ollama.

  1. Run a local server such as Ollama or LM Studio and load a capable model. A 7B–13B parameter instruction-tuned model is the minimum for usable summaries; better hardware means you can run a larger, better model.
  2. In Settings → Providers, open the AI provider dropdown and pick LM Studio or Ollama. The row expands into an editor.
  3. Enter the server's Base URL — the default is http://localhost:1234/v1 for LM Studio and http://localhost:11434/v1 for Ollama. Use the OpenAI-compatible base ending in /v1, not the server's native REST API. No API key is needed.
  4. Select Test connection & list models. Daisy lists models at {base}/v1/models and probes {base}/v1/chat/completions to confirm summaries will work, then pick a model and Save.

Picking the local server in that dropdown also makes it your default — there's no separate step.

Don't want to run a local AI server? Use copy-paste.

If you want full privacy for the transcript but don't want to set up a local AI server and don't want a paid API key, there's a free middle ground:

  1. In Settings → Providers, set AI provider to None — use copy-paste.
  2. Open the meeting after Daisy finishes the transcript.
  3. Click Copy all on the transcript (or Copy on the summary) — it bundles a ready-to-paste prompt.
  4. Paste it into your own ChatGPT or Claude session, ask for a summary.
  5. Paste the summary back into Daisy.

No setup, no key, no per-meeting cost. See meeting summaries for the paste-back step.