Get started

1. Step 1 / 11

   Welcome

   By the end of this guide you record a voice memo on your iPhone and the transcript appears, as a text file, in a folder on your Mac.

   The flow

   1. Capture. You talk into your iPhone or your Mac.
   2. Platform. Deep Thought Cloud transcribes the recording and separates the speakers.
   3. Bridge. Trillian, an app on your Mac, fetches the transcript into a local folder.
   4. Work. You, or an AI assistant, read, search and act on it.

   The guide installs one piece at a time. If you get stuck, e-mail support@deep-thought.cloud.

2. Step 2 / 11

   record-me on your iPhone

   record-me is the iPhone app where your voice memos start. It records, sends the recording to your Deep Thought Cloud account and shows the transcript when it is ready. It is in beta, not yet publicly released; what it does is on the record-me page.

   If record-me is on your iPhone

   1. Open record-me
   2. Choose Sign in with Apple, with the Apple ID you use for everything else
   3. Allow microphone access when iOS asks

   Sign in with Apple is the only sign-in option. There is no separate password: your Apple ID is your account.

   No record-me? Go on to Create your vault folder. Trillian brings in the voice memos you record on the Mac.

3. Step 3 / 11

   Record your first voice memo

   Check that record-me works before going further, with a ten-second test recording. Without record-me, skip this step.

   What to do

   1. In record-me, tap the big red record button
   2. Say anything: "Hello, this is my first recording, today is <today's date>."
   3. Tap stop after about ten seconds
   4. The app shows the upload, then the transcript when it is ready

   Check that it worked

   Open app.deep-thought.cloud in your iPhone's browser, sign in with Apple, and look for the test recording in the list. If it is there, the iPhone half works.

   Not there after a few minutes? The recording did not reach Deep Thought Cloud. Check that record-me has a connection and try again on Wi-Fi. If it is still missing, e-mail support@deep-thought.cloud with a screenshot.

4. Step 4 / 11

   Create your vault folder

   A vault is just a folder on your Mac that holds your notes as plain text files (markdown). Trillian will write transcripts here. You can open and edit the files with whatever tool you prefer — VS Code, Sublime Text, BBEdit, nano, or Obsidian if you want graph views and wiki links. The vault doesn't care.

   What to do

   1. Open Finder on your Mac
   2. Go to your home folder (⌘ ⇧ H)
   3. Create a new folder named vault (right-click → New Folder, or ⌘ ⇧ N)
   4. Inside that, create a subfolder for yourself — e.g. vault/<your-name>

   That's it. The path you'll use later is ~/vault/<your-name>/ (replace <your-name> with whatever you named your subfolder).

   Optional: install a markdown editor

   You don't have to install anything to read the files — TextEdit on your Mac will open them. But if you want a nicer experience:

   • VS Code — free, programmer-style editor
   • Obsidian — free, note-style editor with graph view and wiki links
   • Sublime Text — minimalist text editor

   All three open the same files. Pick whichever feels comfortable. You can change later — the vault is just folders and text files; nothing locks you in.

5. Step 5 / 11

   Install Claude Code

   Claude Code is a command-line tool from Anthropic that works with the files on your Mac. At the end of the guide you use it to read and organise the files in your vault.

   1. Open Terminal

   Press ⌘ Space, type terminal and press Enter.

   2. Run the install command

   Paste this into Terminal and press Enter. The installer puts Claude Code on your path; it needs no Node.js and no sudo.

   curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

   Wait until it prints Installation complete!

   3. Add it to your path, only if asked

   If the installer warns that ~/.local/bin is not in your PATH, run:

   echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc

   No warning? Skip this. The line prints nothing when it works.

   4. Start Claude Code

   claude

   The first run asks a few questions:

   • Text style. Pick any; press the number, then Enter.
   • Sign in. Claude Code prints a link and may open your browser. Sign in with your Anthropic account. Which Anthropic plans include Claude Code is stated at claude.ai/code.
   • Trust this folder? Press 1 for Yes, proceed, then Enter.
   • Ready. A prompt such as > with a blinking cursor means Claude Code is running.

   Type /exit and press Enter to leave for now.

6. Step 6 / 11

   Optional: core-skills

   Ready-made skills that help Claude Code organise a vault are described on the core-skills site; core-skills is a sibling family of tools, not part of Deep Thought.

7. Step 7 / 11

   Sign in to Deep Thought Cloud on the Mac

   Trillian connects to your account through your browser, so sign in there first. There is no separate Trillian password.

   What to do

   1. On the Mac, open app.deep-thought.cloud in your usual browser
   2. Sign in the same way you did in record-me: Sign in with Apple, with the same Apple ID
   3. No record-me and no account yet? Create one on the same page
   4. Leave the browser signed in. The next step opens it

   Why the browser? Trillian never sees your password. The Web App approves this Mac once, and Trillian keeps a device token for it that you can revoke in the Web App.

8. Step 8 / 11

   Install Trillian on your Mac

   Trillian is a small menu bar app that watches Apple Voice Memos on your Mac, uploads new recordings to Deep Thought Cloud and writes each transcript into your vault. It also brings down the recordings you made on your iPhone.

   Download

   Click the link below. A zip file will download.

   Download Trillian 1.6.0-alpha.13 (zip, about 3 MB)

   Install

   1. Open Finder. Go to your Downloads folder
   2. Double-click Trillian-1.6.0-alpha.13.zip to unzip it. You'll get Trillian.app
   3. Drag Trillian.app into your Applications folder (Finder sidebar → Applications)
   4. Double-click Trillian in Applications

   Trillian is signed and notarised by Apple, so it opens like any other app. Look at the top of your screen, near the clock: a small menu bar icon has appeared. There is no Dock icon and no main window.

   Point it at your vault

   1. Click the menu bar icon → Settings…
   2. On the General tab, set Vault path to the folder from step 4 (~/vault/<your-name>)
   3. Turn on Start Trillian at login
   4. Click Save

   Watch Voice Memos

   1. Go to the Captures tab
   2. Click Detect Voice Memos folder
   3. The row says Full Disk Access needed: macOS protects that folder. Click Open Full Disk Access settings…, switch Trillian on (or click + and add it from Applications)
   4. Back in Trillian, click Restart Trillian. macOS applies the permission only when the app starts
   5. The row now says how many files Trillian can see, for example Voice Memos: 12 files visible

   Connect to Deep Thought

   1. Still on Captures, turn on Upload to Deep Thought for transcription
   2. Click Connect to Deep Thought…. Your browser opens on the Web App, where you signed in in the previous step
   3. Check that the code on the page matches the one Trillian shows, then approve
   4. Settings shows Connected. Click Save

   "Readable but no audio files"? macOS is keeping your recordings in iCloud rather than on this Mac. Turn on Keep Voice Memos running in the background on the Captures tab: recordings arrive as files only while Voice Memos is open.

9. Step 9 / 11

   Sync your existing recordings into the vault

   You probably already have some recordings on your iPhone (the test from step 3, plus anything else you've recorded). Trillian's Sync from Deep Thought pulls all of them down into your vault as text files, so your local copy matches what is in your account.

   What to do

   1. Click the Trillian menu bar icon → Settings…
   2. Go to the Captures tab
   3. Click Sync from Deep Thought…
   4. A progress sheet shows X of Y synced as it works through your recordings
   5. When it is done it shows how many were synced and how many were already in the vault

   Verify

   Open Finder, go to your vault folder (~/vault/<your-name>/_inbox/), and you should see one .md file per recording. Open one with TextEdit or VS Code: the transcript is inside.

   Running it again is safe: recordings already in the vault are skipped.

10. Step 10 / 11

    First voice memo round-trip

    The full system: record on your Mac, get the transcript in your vault. This step checks the whole path.

    What to do

    1. Open Voice Memos on your Mac (⌘ Space → type voice memos)
    2. Hit the red record button
    3. Say something: "Round-trip test, today is <today's date>."
    4. Hit stop after about 10 seconds
    5. Trillian picks up the recording, uploads it to Deep Thought Cloud and waits for the transcript
    6. When the transcript is ready, a new .md file appears in ~/vault/<your-name>/_inbox/, with the audio beside it in _inbox/.audio/

    Watch it happen

    • Click the Trillian menu bar icon. The Captures section shows what is pending, processing and done, and a line such as Checked 14:02 · last new Today 13:58
    • Open capture log in the same section shows every file found, uploaded and transcribed, with times

    Only recordings made after capture is turned on are sent; older ones are left alone. No file after a few minutes? Open Settings → Captures and read the folder's status line, which says exactly what Trillian can and cannot see. Still stuck: e-mail support@deep-thought.cloud with that line and the last lines of the capture log.

11. Step 11 / 11

    You're set up

    That's it. You now have:

    • If you have record-me: an iPhone app that captures voice memos and sends them to Deep Thought
    • A Mac app (Trillian) that captures voice memos from Apple Voice Memos and writes transcripts into your local vault
    • A vault folder (~/vault/<your-name>/) where everything lands as plain text files you fully own
    • Claude Code, ready when you want to do more with the contents of your vault

    What you can do now

    • Record on your iPhone. Open record-me, hit the button, say what's on your mind. The transcript shows up in record-me, and then in your vault on the Mac.
    • Record on your Mac. Open Voice Memos, record, stop. Trillian handles the rest.
    • Send older recordings. Trillian sends only what you record after installing it. To send the recordings that were already in Voice Memos: Trillian menu bar icon → Settings… → Captures → Send recordings already in Voice Memos…, all of them or from a date. Nothing is transcribed twice.
    • Read your vault. Open ~/vault/<your-name>/ in Finder. Open the .md files in TextEdit, VS Code, Obsidian — whatever you like. Search them with Spotlight (⌘ Space).
    • Ask Claude to organise things. Open Terminal, run cd ~/vault/<your-name> && claude, and ask in plain English: "Make a list of every recording from this week." Claude reads the files and answers.

    If something stops working

    Email support@deep-thought.cloud describing what happened. If you can include a screenshot or the contents of ~/vault/<your-name>/_inbox/, even better.

    Want Claude to read your knowledge directly?

    You've just set up Claude Code on the terminal — that's one way. There's another: MCP (Model Context Protocol). It connects Claude Desktop, claude.ai in a browser, or Claude Code in any project to your Deep Thought knowledge base. Three or five minutes more, depending on which client.

    • Set up Claude Desktop / claude.ai — chat with your knowledge, no CLI (≈ 3 min)
    • Set up Claude Code with the remote MCP — terminal-native, with your vault one tool-call away (≈ 5 min)
    • Not sure which? — short comparison

    Where to learn more

    • deep-thought.cloud — the platform
    • deep-thought.cloud/en/mcp/ — the MCP product page
    • deep-thought.cloud/en/trillian/ — Trillian's product page
    • app.deep-thought.cloud — your cloud library (the same recordings, viewable on any browser)

If you get stuck, e-mail support@deep-thought.cloud. All guides