Hey try capturing reminders with this spreadsheet-hackable voice-enabled free-to-use call bot:

On your next Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams call, go here and paste your meeting URL. (Sign in with Google first.) Then hit: Invite Action Cat

You’ll get a live Google Sheets spreadsheet of all your meeting actions. Action Cat listens to your conversation. Say “remind me…” and see it update.

The spreadsheet link appears once you admit the bot to your call. (Copy and paste the link into chat so others can see. The doc is public by default. Lock it down if you’d prefer they request access.) The full transcript is updated with minimal lag on the second tab, timestamped and broken down by speaker. Transcription is magically good.

🚧 Use Chrome on a desktop for now. Safari needs pop-up windows set to “Allow” for sign-in to work, and this isn't mobile friendly yet. 🚧

The main tab of the output spreadsheet showing a user-configuration tag 'remind me' and lines from the transcript containing that tag.

You can hack the way the bot works live on the call. Change the “remind me” phrase to pick up actions using a different keyword. Edit the formulas.

e.g. at the end of your call, search for “?” on the whole transcript to make sure all your questions have been answered. Check who has spoken most. Or least. Or =ANYTHING() else. It’s just a spreadsheet. Edit the wiring of the whole thing. Build a smart speaker for virtual meetings and call out to GPT-3, whatever. The document is yours. Tell us how you use it.

The transcript tab of the output spreadsheet, showing a list of speaker names and lines of speech. A calculation tab of the output spreadsheet, showing that metrics (here called 'trophies') can be calculated.

Reduct is a collaborative, transcription-based video platform. You can upload or live capture more videos, tag transcripts, and make video supercuts. Start your free trial to get all the functionality.

Some background from Matt 💬

I met the Reduct team as they were building the Live Capture tool (launched Dec 2022). Reduct is a deep product suite for multiplayer video editing, and the transcription is uncannily good (like, you can jump between phonemes and exact video frame).

Live transcription seemed transformative beyond even the immediate feature. So we got to wondering: is there a way to let everyone experiment with this? Amazingly the team were up for a collab. The result is Action Cat.

Action Cat is a call bot with wires hanging out the back. It’s useful from minute 1. Who doesn’t track tasks in meetings? And quick for people to try.

Then hackable by anyone who can write a spreadsheet formula. We found ourselves interacting with the transcript during our collab calls, sometimes playing to add up durations, sometimes checking back to see if we’d addressed a point… a mini feedback loop inside the conversation.

Action Cat scratches a few personal design itches:

I wrote two speculations sparked specifically by this collab, about spreadsheets and apps and about 24/7 transcription.

I’m into Action Cat because it’s a sharp and sharable use of Reduct’s cutting edge tech, with an expressive second read. After a great experience with Reduct, I’m also up for more collabs. If you’ve got some new technology or product to play with, then email me and let’s chat.

Why Action Cat?

Because it sounds like a character not a feature, and also because I’m into the idea that you could cat a conversation and pipe it into grep or whatever. Also why not 😽

Influences

Thank you

Thanks to the Reduct team for being up for exploring new interfaces on a real platform. Thanks especially to Robert Ochshorn and Ned Burnell for this collab.


Matt, Dec 2022