The design: a recorder that does not lose things
What the app should look like and how it should behave, agreed over two rounds between a product agent and a design agent on 13 November 2026, with the engineer reconciling. This page is intention, like the plan; what is built says how much of it exists.
The product, in one sentence
A voice recorder that turns each recording into a transcript and a short debrief on the device, keeps everything on the device, and copies it, encrypted, to vaults you own and to lanes you choose.
Three jobs, in this order:
- Capture without loss. A recording is on disk as it is spoken and belongs to a note before the first word. A crash, a call, a model that fails or closing the app cannot lose it.
- Give back something readable and findable. A transcript always; a debrief when the model can; a library to find it again.
- Move it where it is needed. Save to a vault, send to a lane, share as text.
Decisions
| Decision | |
|---|---|
| Tabs | Four: Record, Library, Vaults, Settings. A tab bar on iPhone, a sidebar on iPad and Mac |
| No setup | Nothing is needed to record and keep notes on the device: no vault, no account, no token |
| Keeping | Saving to the device is automatic and has no switch. Saving to a vault is by choice |
| Sending | Sending to a lane is never automatic. It asks every time and names the key the note is encrypted to |
| At Stop | The note opens at once and fills in: the transcript first, then the debrief |
| Reading order | "In one sentence" first, then key points, then actions. Stored order is unchanged. If the model lost the headings, its text is shown as one plain block |
| Actions | Share, Save to vault and Send are visible, each showing its own state. Nothing core is hidden in a menu |
| Words | Vault, lane, debrief, access token: the owner's words. A library item is a "note", because a note may have no debrief |
| Honesty | The privacy line says where this note actually is. No step is shown as done before it is. No player is shown before there is one |
| Vault key | The vault screen says plainly that the key lives on this device only and that losing it loses the vault |
| Deleting | Deleting a note removes it from this device. A copy in a vault stays, and the confirmation says so |
The screens
Record. One red control, 88 points across, pinned at the bottom where a thumb reaches; it does not move between idle and recording. Above it while recording: a large timer, the microphone's level as bars, and the words as they are spoken. Idle: the three most recent notes. The language is a small menu in the toolbar.
Note. Date and details; one line saying where the note is; the audio player; the debrief as cards; the transcript, each line a button that moves the audio to that moment; then Share, Save to vault and Send.
Library. Notes by day, newest first. A row is the note's one sentence, the time and length, and at most one mark: working, something wrong, or saved to a vault.
Vaults. Opens with what a vault is in three lines and one button. Each vault shows what was saved first; files, history, branches and the key sit behind "Technical".
Settings. Language, saving, lanes, and an Advanced area for diagnostics and the vault engine's log.
Look. VoiceDebrief's green as the accent, red only for recording and failures, amber for anything degraded. System type. Cards with a hairline, no shadows. Content is held to a readable width so that a wide Mac window is not a stretched phone.
Three builds
Each is small enough to test on a device from a screenshot before the next starts.
| Build | What |
|---|---|
| A | Capture without loss and the new shell: the note created when recording starts, the recording in a form that survives a crash, the library, four tabs, the record screen |
| B | The note and the library proper: cards, the audio player, tap a line to hear it, honest banners, the colours and widths |
| C | Keeping and sending: several vaults and several lanes with names, saved and sent states on each note, "also save to vault", retry |
Open questions for the owner
- Should saving to a vault be automatic once a vault is chosen? Recommended: yes, behind one switch, off until a vault exists.
- May a note ever be sent to a lane automatically? Recommended: not yet; later, per lane, only for lanes the owner added.
- Does deleting a note in the app delete it from a vault? Recommended: no.