Dscout: Experience research platform for moderated interviews, diary studies, and usability testing with AI transcription, themes, and analysis. Minutes: Open-source, local-first conversation memory layer that records and transcribes meetings, diarizes speakers, and stores searchable notes as markdown for AI agents. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Dscout when running and transcribing moderated user interviews matters most, and Minutes when recording and transcribing calls locally for users who refuse cloud meeting tools matters most. Try them side by side on real calls before deciding — needs vary by team.
Experience research platform for moderated interviews, diary studies, and usability testing with AI transcription, themes, and analysis.
Open-source, local-first conversation memory layer that records and transcribes meetings, diarizes speakers, and stores searchable notes as markdown for AI agents.
Dscout is an experience research platform that pairs human participant feedback with AI tools to help teams gather and analyze qualitative insights at scale. It supports a range of research methods, including live and uploaded moderated interviews, usability testing with heat maps and task success metrics, real-time site intercepts, field studies, diary studies with multiple activities, and media-rich surveys. For interviews, Dscout simplifies scheduling across time zones, integrates incentives, supports observers, and can capture both a participant's face and screen, and it also offers an AI Moderator that can autonomously guide participants, seek clarification, and capture feedback. On the analysis side, Dscout provides automated transcription, AI-generated summaries of open-ended and video responses, AI-generated themes presented as smart tags for pattern identification, and surfacing of notable moments that highlight strong opinions or surprising insights. Teams can recruit from Dscout's verified Scout participant pool or bring their own audience. Known historically for mobile and in-context research, Dscout positions itself as an AI-native platform that helps researchers capture high-fidelity feedback and move quickly from raw sessions to organized, analyzable insights. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Minutes, built by Mat Silverstein, is an open-source, privacy-first conversation memory layer that captures meetings, calls, voice memos, and dictation and turns them into searchable, AI-accessible notes. It transcribes audio locally using whisper.cpp or Parakeet so audio never has to leave the machine, performs speaker diarization to separate voices, and extracts decisions and action items, writing everything to the user's own disk as plain markdown files with structured YAML frontmatter. Because the output lives in a local folder (for example ~/meetings/), the notes can sync across devices through iCloud, Dropbox, or Google Drive and can be read directly by AI tools. A central design goal is integration with AI assistants: Minutes runs an MCP server exposing a large set of tools so coding and chat agents such as Claude, Codex, Gemini CLI, and others can query past conversations, track relationships across meetings, and surface what was promised to whom. It ships as a macOS desktop app with a menu-bar recorder and AI assistant, plus a cross-platform command-line interface, and includes a dictation hotkey mode. The project is MIT licensed, installable via Homebrew, and actively maintained with frequent releases, making it a fully self-hostable option for people who want durable, private, searchable meeting memory rather than a cloud subscription. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Dscout is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Minutes is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Dscout | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Moderated live and uploaded video interviews with observer support | Local transcription with whisper.cpp or Parakeet, no cloud audio upload |
| Standout feature | AI Moderator that dynamically guides participants and captures feedback | Speaker diarization to attribute who said what |
| Team usage | Automated transcription of interviews and responses | Plain-markdown output with YAML frontmatter stored on your own disk |
| Integrations | AI-generated summaries of open-ended and video responses | MCP server exposing tools so AI agents can query meeting history |
| Languages & capture | AI-generated themes as smart tags and surfaced notable moments | Cross-meeting search, relationship tracking, and action-item extraction |
| Best-fit workflow | Diary studies, usability testing, intercepts, and media-rich surveys | macOS desktop app plus cross-platform CLI and dictation hotkey mode |
Dscout
Choose Dscout if you need running and transcribing moderated user interviews — strengths include supports many research methods beyond interviews in one platform.
Minutes
Choose Minutes if you need building a private, searchable memory of meetings and voice notes that ai agents can query — strengths include fully local-first and mit licensed, keeping conversation data private and portable.
Dscout
Minutes
It depends on your workflow. Dscout is strong for running and transcribing moderated user interviews, while Minutes is strong for building a private, searchable memory of meetings and voice notes that ai agents can query. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Dscout is a free tier with paid upgrades and Minutes is a free tier with paid upgrades. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
Sure. Running both makes sense when their strengths don't overlap and the budget allows.
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