Start with installation, then follow the guide for the task at hand.
Getting started — install a release or build from source, make a short test recording, and read your transcript.
Commands — every verb the binary takes, what each one writes, and what it prints.
Settings — what you can change, where the values live, and which ones take effect on the next recording rather than immediately.
What is kept — consent, audio retention and speaker names. Read this before recording anyone who is not you.
When it does not work — a recording that succeeds and contains silence is the failure you will hit, and it can be a permissions or launch problem. Diagnose both tracks before changing settings.
Reading sessions from an assistant — ambient mcp hands the
transcript to Claude Code or any other MCP client as data. Registration, the
three read-only tools, and how to follow a session while it records.
The live assistant — an agent in your own Claude Code
session joins a meeting by voice through ambient mcp. Off until you turn it
on; read what it sends off the Mac first.
What a recording produces
One directory per session under ~/Documents/Ambient: transcript.md to read,
raw.jsonl and edits.jsonl holding what the recogniser heard and everything
applied on top of it, session.json, and — until retention sweeps it — audio/.
What is kept describes each file and how long it lives.
Reading one is the window’s job rather than a page’s: Open Ambient in the status menu, ⌘0, lists every session and shows the transcript beside the naming and diarization controls for whichever is selected. The verbs on commands do the same work from a script.