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Syntheo carries tea in its name: Syn·thé·o (thé is French for tea), what you gather around tea. In Japan, a chakai (茶会) brings together a host and their guests for a carefully prepared moment. A participant then keeps its kaiki (会記): their own record of the gathering. A Syntheo note follows this flow. 備 Prepare: before the meeting, you choose its type and add the participants. 聴 Listen: you take your notes, the transcript scrolls in the margin. 結 Synthesis: Syntheo completes your notes into a summary, and the 記 seal marks the note as finished. Your notes stay in green, Syntheo’s text in ink. A meeting cannot be replayed (一期一会, ichi-go ichi-e, “one encounter, one time only”): Syntheo never keeps the audio, only the note remains. And what is said there does not leave your premises: transcription and synthesis go only through your servers, with no account and no telemetry.

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The three steps

The full flow is in Record a meeting.

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What the ritual explains

The summary starts from your notes. A kaiki is the notebook of someone who was there, not the official minutes of an institution. Syntheo does not replace your notes with a summary: it completes them with the transcript. Your notes stay in green and the text Syntheo adds in ink, so you can see who wrote what. The audio is never kept. A moment cannot be replayed; that is what makes it worth recording. Syntheo keeps the note and the transcript, never the recording: the audio lives in memory long enough to be transcribed, then disappears. See Data and privacy. What is said stays between you. A chakai is held in a closed room, among those invited. Your transcription and synthesis servers are like the people who bring the tea from outside the room: you are the one who invites them. Syntheo only talks to the servers you configure, has no account, and sends nothing to its publisher. Preparing is part of the meeting. For the host, preparation is not a formality: it is already attention paid to the guests. That is why a Syntheo note starts before listening, with the meeting type and the participants.

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The Japanese words

The kanji in the app are ornaments: they carry no information. The labels stay in your language.