Getting started
From zero to your first finished session note in about ten minutes — most of which is the one-time downloads.
Chronicle Keeper is a desktop app that turns Craig Bot recordings of your D&D sessions into clean, structured notes. Everything heavy — the transcription — happens on your own machine. You only reach the internet to download the app, the speech model (once), and to call a cloud LLM if you choose one over a local model.
You don't need to be technical. If you can install an app and copy-paste a key, you can run Chronicle Keeper. The workflow guide walks every screen with pictures.
What you'll need
- A Craig Bot recording of a session — the ZIP it emails you, with one audio track per speaker. (How Craig works →)
- A Mac, Windows PC, or Linux machine.
- An LLM to do the writing — either Ollama running locally (free) or an API key from a cloud provider.
Quick start
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Install the app
Grab the installer for your operating system from the Releases page. First launch shows a one-time "unknown developer" prompt — that's expected.
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Choose your LLM in Settings
Open Settings and either point it at a local Ollama server or paste a cloud API key. Keys never leave your machine.
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Create a campaign & upload
Make a campaign, start a new session, and drop in your Craig ZIP. Label which track is which player.
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Transcribe
Hit transcribe. On the very first run the speech model (Parakeet TDT v3) downloads once, then every track is transcribed on-device.
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Summarize & export
Generate the summary with your chosen LLM, give it a read, then export to Markdown with Obsidian frontmatter.
The app itself is small, but the speech model is a few hundred MB and downloads once on your first transcription. After that it's reused and you can work fully offline.
Where to go next
Install & first launch
Per-OS steps and how to get past the "unknown developer" warning.
LLM setup
Run Ollama free, or get an API key from Anthropic, OpenAI, Groq and friends.
The workflow
Upload → label → transcribe → summarize → export, screen by screen.
The Codex
Teach the summarizer your NPC and place names so it stops mangling them.