Stenograf Terms of Use

Last updated: 2026-09-10

Stenograf is the desktop app for macOS and Windows, with an optional Chrome companion, made by Soniqo, a Delaware company (“Soniqo”, “we”). These Terms are the agreement between you and Soniqo for the app, its companion, and the Stenograf account, trial and subscription you manage at console.soniqo.audio. By creating an account, installing Stenograf, or using it, you agree to them. The Stenograf Privacy Policy says what leaves your computer, and when; these Terms say what you and we are each responsible for. Questions: [email protected].

What Stenograf is, and where your recordings are

Stenograf records what your computer plays and what your microphone hears, transcribes it on your computer, recognises voices you have named, and answers questions from the transcripts you have saved. It is local-first: recordings, transcripts, voice profiles, Discover conversations and calendar details stay on your computer, and Soniqo does not receive them. Two things follow, and the rest of these Terms relies on both.

• We cannot see, recover, restore, hand over or delete a recording or transcript for you. They exist only where you keep them, and backing them up is your job.
• You, not Soniqo, are the party responsible for them under the recording, privacy and data-protection law that applies to you. Soniqo is not a processor or service provider for your recordings, transcripts or voice profiles, and does not offer a data processing agreement for them.

Recording other people

You decide when Stenograf records, and nothing in it records without you. The other people in a conversation have not agreed to these Terms, and recording them is regulated: many countries, several US states and many workplaces require that every participant be told before recording starts, often that each of them agree, and some regulate recognising a person by their voice as a separate matter. Which rules apply depends on where you are, where the other participants are, and the relationship between you.

Notice and consent are yours to obtain

Before you record, you must give every notice and obtain every consent that the law applying to you and to each participant requires, and keep whatever record of that the law requires. Stenograf reminds you to do this before every recording. That reminder, the optional recording badge where one is offered, and the Chrome companion inform nobody, obtain nobody’s consent, and cannot check whether you did. Nothing Soniqo publishes is legal advice.

Voice profiles

When you name a voice, Stenograf keeps a voice profile on your computer so that it can recognise that person in later recordings. In some places, Illinois among them, a voice profile is biometric data with its own written-notice, consent and retention rules. You are responsible for meeting them before you name anyone, and for deleting a profile you no longer have a basis to keep.

What you share from a recording

Transcripts leave your computer only when you send them. A Discover rating you confirm carries the passages the answer quoted, which can be other people’s words. The local MCP server, if you turn it on, lets a client you authorise read the transcripts you grant it. Anything you copy, export or repeat is yours to answer for. Whatever you share, you confirm that you may.

Your responsibility

You are responsible for the consequences of recording, transcribing, recognising or sharing without a notice or consent that was required. To the extent the law allows, you will defend and indemnify Soniqo against a third-party claim, and the costs of it, arising from your breach of these Terms, your breach of the law, or your infringement of somebody’s rights through your use of Stenograf.

Your licence

Soniqo grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to install and use Stenograf for your own personal or business use, on up to two devices, for as long as your trial or subscription lasts, subject to these Terms. Activating a third is refused until you release one. You may not copy it except to install it, distribute or sell it, reverse engineer it beyond what the law allows regardless of this sentence, or circumvent, disable or interfere with its licence checks. Stenograf verifies its licence with our servers and keeps working for a limited time without a connection; after that it stops recording until it can verify again. We may retire a build, for instance for a security fix, after which that build stops recording and the console offers the current one; your account, your subscription and your saved transcripts are unaffected. Stenograf runs on your computer, not on our servers, so we cannot operate, patch or restore it on your behalf, and staying on a current version is part of using it.

Models and services from others

Stenograf downloads its speech and search models directly from Hugging Face, or from the hf-mirror.com mirror if you have chosen it, and runs generative features through Ollama, which you install yourself. Each model is licensed by its author on its own terms, published where it is downloaded from; where a licence requires it, its notice is installed with the app, and you agree to those terms by using the features the model powers. The search model is one of those: it comes under the Gemma Terms of Use, so you must not put it to the uses their prohibited-use policy lists. Google Calendar, if you connect it, and the Chrome companion, installed only from the Chrome Web Store, are used under Google’s terms; payments are handled by Stripe under Stripe’s.

What the models write

Transcripts, speaker names, captions, summaries, translations and Discover answers are written by machine-learning models. They can mishear, invent words, attribute them to the wrong person, and answer confidently from the wrong meeting. Check anything that matters against the recording itself before relying on it. What you do with what the app writes is your decision and your responsibility.

Acceptable use

You must not use Stenograf:

• to record, transcribe or identify anyone where you have no right to;
• to monitor anyone who does not know they are being recorded where their knowledge or consent is required;
• to circumvent its licence checks, interfere with our services, or gain access to another account;
• in violation of the law, or of the model and service terms above.

Account, trial and subscription

You need a Soniqo account to use Stenograf, and you are responsible for it and for everything done through it. If you use Stenograf for a company or other organisation, you confirm that you may accept these Terms on its behalf, and “you” then means both you and it. A new account may start a free trial of the length shown when it is offered, with no card; when it ends, Stenograf stops recording until you subscribe, and what you saved stays on your computer. Prices, the billing period and what is charged today are shown before you subscribe, and Stripe collects the payment. A subscription started during a trial is charged nothing until the trial ends. It then renews automatically at the end of each period until you cancel, which you can do at any time from the console; recording continues to the end of the period you have paid for, or of the trial, and nothing further is charged. A period already begun is not refunded except where the law requires. We may change prices with at least 30 days’ notice, applying from your next renewal after it. You are responsible for any tax on your purchase that we are not required to collect.

Ending

You can stop using Stenograf at any time and delete your account from the console. We may suspend or end your account or licence if you breach these Terms, with notice where practical, and end it with reasonable notice if we stop offering Stenograf. If we end your paid subscription because we are discontinuing Stenograf, rather than because you broke these Terms, we refund the part of what you have already paid that covers the period you no longer get. When it ends, the licence ends and Stenograf stops recording; what is on your computer stays there, and we could not remove it if we wanted to.

Warranties and liability

Stenograf is provided “as is” and as available, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and the accuracy of anything it transcribes, attributes, summarises, translates or answers. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Soniqo is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, for lost data, recordings or transcripts, or for any claim by a participant in something you recorded, and our aggregate liability arising out of or related to Stenograf is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim or one hundred US dollars. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, or rights that consumer law gives you where you live.

Resolving a dispute

If you have a dispute with us, tell us first and give us a chance to put it right. Write to [email protected], or open a support ticket from the console, describing the problem and what you would like us to do. Neither you nor Soniqo may begin a legal proceeding until 60 days after that notice, and any deadline for bringing the claim is paused while those 60 days run. Either of us may bring a claim in a small-claims court without waiting, and either of us may ask a court at any time to stop an infringement of intellectual property.

Any claim arising out of or relating to Stenograf must be brought within one year of the events it is based on, or it is waived, unless the law where you live gives you longer.

We do not ask you to give up going to court, and there is no arbitration clause and no class-action waiver in these Terms.

Law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the law of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules, and any proceeding not brought in a small-claims court will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Delaware. If you use Stenograf as a consumer in a country whose law entitles you to its own courts or to mandatory protections, you keep them.

Sanctions and export control

You may not use Stenograf if using it would put you or Soniqo in breach of United States sanctions, export-control law or other trade restrictions, and you confirm that no such rule prohibits you from receiving it.

The rest of the agreement

If any part of these Terms cannot be enforced, the rest stays in force. Not enforcing something straight away does not give it up. You may not transfer these Terms without our consent; we may transfer them in a merger, acquisition, reorganisation or sale of the business they belong to. These Terms, with anything they expressly incorporate, are the whole agreement about Stenograf, so something said on a web page or in a message does not add to them. What they say about fees you already owe, disclaimers, liability, indemnity and resolving a dispute keeps applying after they end, or ending them would remove the limits on a claim about the time before.

Changes

We may change Stenograf, including adding, changing or removing features. We may update these Terms; material changes are announced in the console or by email at least 14 days before they take effect, and using Stenograf after that date is acceptance. The date at the top is the current version.

Contact

[email protected], or a support ticket from the console.