A path, and everything that follows from one.
Spotlight indexes it, Time Machine backs it up, a sync client moves it, a script reads it. None of that is a feature anyone had to build for you, and none of it can be withdrawn in a pricing change.
Meeting notes as Markdown files.
In most tools the note is a row in the vendor’s database. Here it is a file in a folder you picked, and everything else follows from that.
Vaultmeetings202608
--- date: 2026-08-03 10:30 attendees: [Dom, Ante, Marie] tags: [launch, pricing] duration: 41m --- # Product launch ## Decisions - Launch moves to the 20th, notch fix ships first. - Pricing page keeps the one time option. ## Action items - [ ] Marie: pricing copy, Friday - [ ] Ante: notch build for testers ## Transcript [00:04:12] Marie: The 13th is too tight for the build. [00:04:26] Dom: Then the 20th, and we say so today.
Your meeting notes in Finder, like any other files.
Search that nobody owns.
Inside an app, search is something the vendor ships and meters. Over a folder it is the operating system plus every text tool written in the last forty years.
Version history without a plan tier.
Run git init in the folder and every edit becomes a diff with a date on it. You can get back a paragraph you deleted in June.
Your second brain already knows it.
If your vault is Markdown, the note is simply a note: backlinks, tags and daily notes work on it without an integration. An agent pointed at the folder reads the same document you do.
What a meeting file looks like inside.
The longer version, from here down, for anyone who wants the whole argument rather than the four scenes of it.
The useful shape is boring on purpose. A front matter block at the top for the things a machine reads, date, attendees, tags, duration. Then the summary, the decisions, the action items with a name against each one, the open questions, your own notes from during the call, and the full transcript with timestamps at the bottom. Headings and lists, nothing exotic, because the point of Markdown here is that the structure survives being read as raw text. If you would rather start from something than from a blank file, the six meeting note templates are that shape written out, one per kind of meeting.
Two conventions pay for themselves. Put the transcript in the same file rather than beside it, so a note is never half missing. And keep the audio next to it under the same name, so a timestamp in the text can still be played back.
What files cost you.
This is the part the file evangelism usually skips, and every item on it is a real reason to pick a workspace instead.
- No comments, no permissions, no multiplayer. If three people need to annotate the same meeting note and see each other doing it, that is what a shared workspace is for. A folder of files has none of it. The comparison with Notion AI is the honest version of this trade.
- Sharing produces a copy. Sending a file sends a snapshot that stops updating the moment it lands. A link into a workspace does not have that problem.
- Sync is now your job. iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Syncthing or Git all work fine on a Markdown vault. Choosing one and noticing when it breaks is still one more thing you own.
- No admin console. No retention policy, no legal hold, no organisation-wide deletion, no audit of who opened what. If your company needs those, a folder on a laptop is the wrong answer and no amount of ownership fixes it.
- Structure is a convention, not a schema. Nothing stops files from drifting apart over the years. A database enforces its fields, and that enforcement is worth something once more than one person is writing.
Exports Markdown is not the same as is Markdown.
Plenty of tools will hand you Markdown when you ask. The difference is who has to remember to ask, and when. An export is an action you take at a moment you choose, which in practice means the moment you are already leaving, or the moment after you needed the file and did not have it. It also produces a second copy that immediately starts drifting from the one in the app.
Being a file from the start removes the decision. The note is written into the folder when the meeting ends, it is in tonight’s backup without anyone thinking about it, and the version you edit is the version that exists.
If you are moving an archive across, do it in one pass rather than per note, keep the original date in the file name, and put the folder in Git before you start editing anything. The first commit is the safety net for everything after.
Where Aside sits in this.
Your meeting notes are files on your Mac. Aside writes each meeting as a Markdown file into a folder you choose at setup, with the summary, the decisions, the action items, your own notes and the full timestamped transcript in the one document. Obsidian just opens it, Git just tracks it, and nothing expires.
Because the vault is plain files, the MCP server that ships with the app hands an agent exactly the same documents you read, rather than a projection of them. And if you delete the app, the folder is still a folder.
The other half of the story is where the words come from in the first place: Aside records and transcribes on your Mac, and what happens after that is covered honestly here.
Last updated 13 August 2026.
Keep reading.
Transcribing on your Mac
Three routes from a recorded meeting to text without an upload, and the limits of each one.
Read the guide
Aside vs Notion AI
The case for the note living next to the project instead, written out with the costs attached.
Read the comparison
Templates for Obsidian
Six of these files as blanks: standup, client call, interview, decision, retro and one to one.
Read the guide
Aside vs Granola
Where the notes live, what the free plan keeps, and what happens to the history when you stop paying.
Read the comparison