Calendly launches an AI note-taker to join a crowded field

Note-taking has quickly become a critical part of the productivity space, with many workplace software companies chasing the same goal: having AI automate tasks based on action items pulled from meeting transcripts. Calendly, known for its scheduling and meeting-booking software, is now entering that fray with its own note-taking product.

Like others in the space, Calendly’s note-taker joins meetings, records audio and video, and transcribes them — after which it can generate a summary and action items, and draft follow-up emails. The company said it is also testing a Granola-like feature that uses system audio to transcribe meetings.

Calendly is also planning to release an AI assistant named Callie that taps the company’s existing meeting and scheduling stack to set up meetings, check people’s availability, and surface context from prior meetings. Meeting note-taking startup Read AI launched a similar email-based assistant earlier this year.

Calendly CEO Tope Awotona said the company wanted to automate workflows for its top users: people in outward-facing roles like sales and marketing whose workday is typically inundated with meetings. But the competition is intense. On one end are meeting note-taking apps like Granola, Fireflies, Read AI, Otter, and Fathom; on the other, productivity companies like Notion, ClickUp, and Wispr have added note-taking assistants and features to their own suites.

Still, Awotona says there’s a big opportunity in automating tasks after a meeting is transcribed. “There’s a litany of note-takers, and all of them do a great job of recording and transcribing notes. But a lot of work happens after the meetings. And we think that really that’s where the opportunity for our note-takers to be efficient,” he said.

Given that some companies in this space, like Otter and Granola, are facing allegations of violating privacy, Awotona said Calendly’s note-taker will inform users that their meeting is being recorded. The recording assistant sends a message in the chat to inform everyone of its presence and activity, and any user can ask the app to leave the conversation. It can even inform people before the meeting starts that the call will be recorded, thanks to its integration with Calendly’s scheduling system.

Why it matters

As note-taking assistants become table stakes across productivity software, the real competition is shifting to what happens after transcription — and to how vendors handle the privacy scrutiny the category has already drawn.