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Use the Chief Live Sessions App on Mac or Windows to capture a meeting while it happens. Chief saves the conversation to a Project, where you can search the transcript, review what was decided, and start work on the next steps.

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Before you start

You need the Chief desktop app installed on your Mac or Windows PC and paired with your account.
Important: A Live Session is captured by the desktop app. You can’t start one from the web app — it’s where you read the results.

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Start capturing

  1. Open the Chief Live Sessions App before or at the start of your meeting. It can also detect a meeting and prompt you.
  2. On Home, use Save to to choose the Project. The picker appears when you have more than one Project.
  3. Choose a Transcription language, including English or Auto-detect (multilingual).
  4. Click Start live session and let the app listen.
  5. Hold your meeting as normal. Chief transcribes both your microphone and your computer’s audio. Chief Live Sessions - the New live session action
The Project picker stays available until capture begins. Chief remembers the last Project you used and selects it by default for your next session, so verify the name before you start.

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Use the app during a session

As Chief builds the transcript, you can add screenshots or paste images, create collaborative documents or canvases, share selected screen context, and invite participants or watchers. You can also change the theme or zoom level to adjust the app’s display.

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Watch it build in the web app

Chief - the project home with Live Sessions selected in the navigation
  1. In the web app, open Live Sessions from the left navigation.
  2. Open the session that’s recording — it shows a red Live badge while capture is active.
  3. As the meeting goes, the Transcript, Live notes, Decisions, and To-dos fill in.
After the meeting, you can find the recording in the Web App under the Project you selected. If Chief hears no final transcript turn for 20 minutes, it ends a session that already has content. This does not happen while you paused the session, lost the host connection, or ran out of credits. Use Resume on the end-of-session sheet to continue recording.
Good to know: While a session shows the Live badge, the Delete option is hidden — you can only delete a session after it has finished recording.

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Name your Session

New sessions may appear as Untitled session. To rename, open the session, click the pencil icon next to the title (or open the actions menu and choose Edit), type a name, and press Enter.

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FAQ

Chief isn’t hearing audio. Confirm the desktop app has microphone and system-audio permission, and that the meeting audio is actually playing through your computer. The page shows “No transcript yet” until audio arrives.
Delete is intentionally unavailable while a session is still recording (it shows the Live badge). Once capture ends, the delete option returns.
Yes — Chief captures whatever audio reaches your computer (your mic and system audio), so it works for in-person discussions too, as long as the app is running and has audio access.
On the end-of-session sheet, use Move this session to another project. In the web app, open the session’s ⋯ menu and choose Move to project. Chief moves the session’s Library documents with it.
Chief ends a session after 20 minutes without a final transcript turn, as long as the session has content and is not paused, disconnected from its host, or out of credits. Click Resume to continue it.

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Contributors

The Chief engineering team thanks the following external contributors for helping build the Live Sessions App:
  • Ansh Vasani — contributed the gostcontext open-source project, a lightweight, dependency-free macOS tool that records on-screen activity as a compact, timestamped XML timeline that AI and text tools can read directly.