Recall is a good idea behind a hardware paywall, and it never hears a word of your meetings. LUCI brings searchable screen memory plus meeting transcription to the Windows machine you already own, processed and stored on-device. Free, and the same app runs on Mac.
A local AI memory app for Windows keeps a searchable record of your own work on your own PC, with capture, understanding, and storage all happening there instead of in a vendor's cloud. LUCI is a free desktop app for Mac and Windows from Memories AI that remembers your screen and meetings on your own device and gives that memory to AI agents like Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex. Microsoft made the category mainstream with Recall, then attached two conditions to it: you need a Copilot+ PC, and it records no audio at all.
Recall's entry ticket: a 40-TOPS NPU, 16 GB of RAM, and Windows 11 24H2. LUCI has no such requirement.
Per Microsoft's documentation, Recall does not record audio. Meetings are invisible to it unless the words were on screen.
On managed and enterprise devices Recall is disabled and removed until IT re-enables it, and each user must still opt in.
Recall asks for a Copilot+ machine: 40-TOPS NPU, 16 GB of RAM, Windows 11 24H2. That is a hardware purchase dressed up as a free feature. LUCI installs on any supported Windows PC and accelerates with whatever NPU or GPU is present.
Recall does not record audio; Microsoft says so in its own documentation. Since most decisions get made out loud, that leaves the important half of the day out of the record. LUCI captures every word — yours and theirs — in meetings and calls, and links it to what was on screen at the time.
Recall's sensitive-information filter was still snapshotting card numbers and SSNs in testers' hands, which is why Signal, Brave, and AdGuard block it outright. LUCI is easier to reason about: you choose what is captured, cards, keys, and passwords are blacked out before anything is saved, and storage is encrypted on your own disk.
On enterprise devices Recall arrives disabled and removed, waiting for IT to turn it back on. LUCI is a normal desktop app with on-device storage, which is usually the answer the security review wanted in the first place.
Six options that run on Windows, on the questions that decide which one you install. Details come from each vendor's public documentation; a dash means we could not source the answer.
| Tool | Platform | Screen capture | Meeting audio | Where data is processed | Works with AI agents | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LUCI | Any supported Windows PC, plus Mac | Continuous, with on-device understanding | Yours and theirs, in meetings and calls | On your device, encrypted at rest | Claude, Cursor, Codex | Free |
| Microsoft Recall | Windows 11 24H2+, Copilot+ PC only | Snapshots every few seconds | No — does not record audio | On-device, Copilot+ PC required | No | Free with a Copilot+ PC |
| Screenpipe | Mac, Windows, Linux | 24/7 capture with OCR | Yes | On-device | No | Free tier; $21/mo or $250/yr |
| OpenRecall | Mac, Windows, Linux | Screenshots with OCR and semantic search | No | On-device | — | Free, open source |
| Pieces | Mac, Windows, Linux, IDEs | Samples workflow context from apps you use | No | On-device | Claude, Cursor, Codex | Free tier; Pro $18.99/mo |
| Granola | Mac & Windows | No screen capture | Yes, bot-free | Cloud transcription, US-hosted AWS | No | Free tier; $14–$35/user/mo |
Recall stops at a search box. What makes the memory worth building is that something else can read it: Works with Claude, Cursor, and Codex — LUCI connects itself, nothing to set up. The agent asks for the slices it needs and those slices become part of its conversation, so you decide which agents you connect.
Your whole day on the computer — meetings, email, code, everything in between — gets distilled each evening by your agent into your Life folder, as plain files on your own PC. Background reading: agent memory, the AI screen recorder, and what LUCI is.
Yes, and that is the gap LUCI fills. Recall requires a Copilot+ machine — a 40-TOPS NPU, 16 GB of RAM, and Windows 11 24H2. LUCI installs on any supported Windows machine, uses your NPU or GPU when there is one, and works fine without one.
No. Microsoft's own documentation states that Recall does not record audio. It saves periodic screenshots and runs OCR over them, so a call leaves almost no trace unless the words happened to be on screen. LUCI captures both the screen and the meeting, in one local record.
Microsoft ships it that way. On managed and enterprise devices Recall is disabled and removed by default, IT has to re-enable it, and each user still has to opt in personally. LUCI is an ordinary desktop app, and its on-device storage is usually what the compliance conversation was asking for anyway.
On the PC that captured it, encrypted at rest. Capture, on-device understanding, and storage all run locally, so the app keeps working offline. Cards, keys, and passwords are blacked out before anything is saved, and you choose which apps and windows are in scope.
Signal, Brave, and AdGuard actively block Recall from seeing their windows, which is a response to an always-on capture pipeline built into the operating system. LUCI takes a narrower approach: you decide what is captured, and exclusions are yours to set.
LUCI is free. The same app runs on macOS from the same codebase, so a memory habit built on a Windows desktop carries over to a MacBook.
Screen and meetings, searchable, processed and stored on your own machine.
Free on Windows and Mac. No Copilot+ hardware needed.