granola.

What do I use Granola for?

Anything I’ll need to remember.

Meetings, client calls, presentations, notes talked into my phone in the car. I turn it on and let it run (make sure the other person knows).

It gives me the transcript and it gives me notes built from the transcript. The notes are genuinely good, which is the part I didn’t expect.

Which feature would I miss most?

Honestly, the folders.

You can file recordings into a folder, and then ask questions against the whole folder at once. Everything about one client, or one project, in one place you can interrogate.

So instead of scrubbing back through six conversations trying to remember who said the thing about needing more of something, I ask, and it goes and finds it across all of them. It doesn’t just locate the quote either. It gives me enough context to build the argument I was reaching for.

Who is Granola for, and who should skip it?

Anyone taking a lot of meetings.

If you’re multitasking, running client conversations, or writing proposals from what people actually said, this earns its place fast.

Skip it for conversations you’d rather weren’t captured at all. Counseling, anything genuinely sensitive. I use it for my own doctor’s appointments too, though I realize plenty of people would absolutely not be comfortable with that.

How have I used Granola recently?

The Tahlequah Chamber of Commerce training.

Everyone took a survey beforehand, but I also ran a couple of group interviews where people walked me through their actual processes. That conversation was the material I needed later, when I went back and personalized each mission brief around what that person’s job really involved and where Claude could help.

Then whenever I had a question about something someone said, I could ask the folder rather than rewatch an hour of conversation.

What do I wish I had known about Granola on day one?

The free plan forgets after thirty days.

The free plan gives you every feature, which is generous. What it doesn’t give you is history. After about thirty days you can’t open the old ones on desktop, though I’ve had them stay reachable longer on mobile.

So decide early. Either move anything you’ll want later off the platform as you go, or pay and keep the archive.

How does Granola fit with my other tools?

It captures. Claude executes.

Granola is never the tool doing the work. It’s the one holding the raw material until something else needs it.

Transcript or cleaned-up notes, whichever the job wants, and then those go into Claude or ChatGPT to actually build something. Supporting role every time, which is exactly what I want from it.

Would I pay for Granola?

Yes. $14 a month.

I do pay, and the only reason is history. That’s the single thing the money buys.

If you don’t need to go back through your archive, the free plan does everything else. If you do, either pay or move your notes somewhere else before the window closes.

What the free plan allows has changed at least once, so check Granola’s own plan details for where it stands now.