Sumbee

Turn meeting transcripts and YouTube videos into clean, structured summaries you own.

A native macOS app. Local-first: your summaries are plain Markdown (or HTML) files on your own hard drive, in a folder you choose. You own them like any private local file; the app never uploads or sees your library. No proprietary format, no lock-in.

macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later · Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) · unsigned build (see install steps below)

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Why Sumbee

• You own your data. Summaries and archived sources are plain files on your hard drive (in ~/Sumbee Summaries, or anywhere you choose), yours like any private local file, usable in Finder, Obsidian, or git with the app closed. The app never uploads or sees your library; the on-disk files are the source of truth. No proprietary format, no lock-in.
• Local-first. Everything stays on your Mac except the two actions you start: sending transcript text to the Anthropic API to summarize, and fetching YouTube captions via yt-dlp.
• Fully private summarization is coming. Local models via Ollama (on-device, nothing leaves your Mac) are on the roadmap.
• Styles are just prompts. Each summary style is an editable prompt that also names a folder in your library: make one per use-case (standups, interviews, research videos…).
• Native & beautiful. SwiftUI + AppKit, real vibrancy/"glass", automatic light/dark, an orange accent, and a single responsive window.
• Zero third-party dependencies. Builds offline with only the Apple Swift toolchain.

Features

• Drag-and-drop transcripts (.md, .txt, .pdf, .docx, .rtf) onto a style → a saved summary, with the original safely archived. Drop many at once: they queue and run one at a time, and one failure never aborts the batch (with automatic, backed-off retries for transient errors).
• YouTube → summary, video or whole playlist. A left mode rail switches between Transcripts and YouTube. In YouTube mode, paste a single video or a playlist URL: a playlist fetches an inline checklist (with already-summarized videos pre-excluded) and summarizes the ones you pick, one at a time, through a chosen style. Fetched playlists are kept under "Your playlists" so you can come back and summarize more (with a Refresh to pick up new videos). If YouTube asks you to "confirm you're not a bot," Sumbee auto-retries once with a different player; if that still fails, update yt-dlp in Settings or switch the YouTube access mode (Settings ▸ YouTube) to use your Chrome or Safari login.
• Regenerate. Re-run any saved summary from its archived original with a different style, model, or format. Produces a new summary, the original is kept.
• Live streaming preview. Watch the summary write itself into the preview pane as it generates, and keep browsing while it runs: select any summary to read it during a generation, then click Watch in the bottom bar to return to the live stream.
• Library search. Instant title filter (⌘F); ⌘N starts a new style.
• Full style CRUD (name, channel, prompt), reflected live in the main window, with optional per-style model & output-format overrides.
• Shared system prompt. One editable prompt is prepended to every style, so common instructions live in one place instead of being duplicated across styles.
• Unified, roomy prompt editing. The system prompt, each style's prompt, and the HTML-styling prompt are all edited in one full-height, non-modal editor inside Settings: many lines visible at once, no cramped floating sheet.
• Live library browser grouped by style, with preview, reveal-in-Finder, open, copy, delete.
• Readable, resizable preview. Increase or decrease the preview pane's base font size from its toolbar; the size sticks across sessions and scales headings proportionally.
• Secure key storage in the macOS Keychain; summarizing is gated until a valid key is set, and re-gated automatically on an auth failure.
• Markdown or HTML output, with an optional shared HTML-styling prompt. Both render in-app: the Markdown preview renders tables and clickable links, and HTML summaries render with their own styling in a built-in viewer that stays basic and private (no scripts run, no remote loads, link clicks open in your browser). Interactive HTML gets a one-click View in Browser button. Drag a summary to Finder, or space-bar Quick Look it.
• Geek mode. Flip it on in the bottom bar to preview the exact prompt and an estimated token count before each summary is sent.
• Model-capability aware: defaults to the latest Claude model and only sends parameters a given model accepts (e.g. it won't send temperature to a model that rejects it).

Screenshots

Settings & model picker	Style editor	Summary output

Download & install

Heads-up: the build is ad-hoc signed, not notarized (no paid Apple Developer certificate), so macOS Gatekeeper will warn on first launch. The steps below clear that, and you only do it once.

1. Download Sumbee-0.6.1.dmg from the latest release (a .zip is also attached if you prefer).
2. Open the disk image and drag Sumbee onto the Applications shortcut.
3. Remove the quarantine flag (the reliable way to open an unsigned app), then launch:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Sumbee.app
   open /Applications/Sumbee.app

   Or without Terminal: right-click Sumbee.app → Open → Open. If macOS still blocks it (common on recent macOS), go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the "Sumbee was blocked" notice, and click Open Anyway.
4. On first launch Sumbee opens to Settings: paste your Anthropic API key, click Save & Validate, then drag a transcript onto a style.

Requirements: macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later, Apple Silicon (M1 or newer). Optional: yt-dlp for the YouTube feature (auto-discovered, or installed from Settings).

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/wynnwu/Sumbee.git
cd Sumbee

swift run Sumbee        # run a debug build
swift test              # run the unit tests (95)
./scripts/bundle.sh     # produce dist/Sumbee.app (release, ad-hoc signed)
open dist/Sumbee.app

Requirements to build: Xcode 26 / Swift 6.2 toolchain, macOS 15+.

How it works on disk

Your library lives at ~/Sumbee Summaries (change it in Settings ▸ Library):

~/Sumbee Summaries/
├── Meetings - General/
│   ├── style-definition/style-definition.md     # the style's prompt + metadata
│   └── 2026-06-21 1432 - Q2 Roadmap Sync.md      # a summary
├── YouTube/style-definition/style-definition.md
└── source/                                        # archived copies of every processed input

A folder is a "style" if it contains style-definition/style-definition.md. Renaming a style folder (in the app or Finder) keeps its prompt attached via a stable id; deleting a style keeps its folder and summaries. Everything is plain text you can read, edit, back up, or version yourself.

Architecture

A SwiftPM package with a testable library and a thin executable shell:

Sources/
  Sumbee/                  # executable: main.swift → SumbeeApp.main()
  SumbeeKit/               # all logic + SwiftUI views (unit-tested)
    Models/                # SummaryStyle, Asset, AppSettings, ModelCatalog, Job, OutputFormat
    Services/              # AnthropicClient (SSE), KeychainStore, LibraryStore, StyleStore,
                           # TextExtractor + Extractors (PDF/RTF/Docx/PlainText),
                           # YouTubeService + VTTParser, SummarizationEngine, PromptBuilder,
                           # FrontmatterCodec, HTMLMetaCodec, Sanitizer, DirectoryWatcher, ProcessRunner
    State/                 # AppState (@MainActor root store) + Jobs/Styles extensions
    Views/                 # MainPanel, AssetBrowser, BottomBar, Settings, Design (Theme/Glass/Components)
Tests/SumbeeKitTests/      # FrontmatterCodec, Sanitizer, ModelCatalog, PromptBuilder, VTTParser, …
scripts/                   # bundle.sh + icon helpers
specs/                     # spec-driven design docs (spec, plan, contracts, tasks)

Everything the app needs is native: PDFs via PDFKit, RTF via NSAttributedString, DOCX via the system unzip + XMLParser, the API via URLSession SSE, the key via the Security framework, yt-dlp via Process, live refresh via FSEvents. No SPM dependencies, no build-time network.

Extending it

• Add a model: append a ModelPreset (with its ModelCapabilities) in Models/ModelCatalog.swift. The request builder consults capabilities, so unsupported parameters are never sent, with no other code changes.
• Add/edit a style: in-app (Settings ▸ Styles), or edit the style-definition.md file in the style's library folder directly.
• Change the default styles: Services/DefaultStyles.swift.

Roadmap

• Local models via Ollama: fully on-device, fully-private summarization (nothing leaves your Mac). Coming soon.
• On-device recording, real-time transcription & speaker diarization (see specs/002)
• Audio/video transcription (Whisper) for inputs without captions
• Chunked map-reduce for transcripts exceeding the context window
• Per-style model overrides UI, library search/tags
• Signed + notarized universal build; auto-update
• Strict Swift 6 concurrency migration; fuller test suite

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. The design rationale lives in specs/, worth a skim before larger changes. Please run swift test before opening a PR.

License

MIT © 2026 Wynn Wu