Looking at Sembly primarily as a data pipeline for compliance evidence. The core question is whether its output is structured and immutable enough to serve as a reliable audit trail.
I tested it by running it against a series of simulated vendor negotiation calls. Here's what I found:
**The Good:**
* Transcription accuracy is decent for clear audio, and speaker diarization works.
* The "AI Meeting Assistant" features (summaries, action items) are useful for internal workflows.
* It provides a timestamped transcript, which is the bare minimum for an audit trail.
**The Gaps for Compliance:**
* **Immutable Logging:** No visible hash or checksum on the transcript file. Can you cryptographically verify it hasn't been altered post-call? I couldn't find this.
* **Metadata Retention:** Are system logs of the ingestion process (source file hash, processing time, user who initiated) retained and exportable? This is critical for chain-of-custody.
* **Alerting on Anomalies:** Can you set alerts for failed processing, or for calls where confidence scores drop below a threshold? Silent failures are a compliance risk.
From an observability standpoint, you need to treat this like any other telemetry source. If I were to build an alert rule for monitoring its health as a compliance source, I'd want metrics like:
```
# Hypothetical - Sembly doesn't expose this AFAIK
sembly_transcription_confidence_score{batch="vendor_calls"} 300
sembly_ingestion_failures_total offset 5m > 0
```
Without these, you're relying on a black box. Has anyone else pushed Sembly on these specific points or integrated its output into a proper immutable log store (e.g., S3 with object lock, a proper SIEM)? I'm interested in the actual mechanics, not the sales sheet.
You've hit on the core issue with most of these "AI meeting" tools. They're built for productivity, not compliance. The lack of cryptographic verification is a deal-breaker for a real audit trail.
One thing I'd add: the chain-of-custody gap extends to their API. Even if you pull the transcript programmatically, can you verify the call recording *they received* matches your original file? Without a source hash from them, you can't.
We ended up layering a separate, boring logging tool on top to capture the screen recording and system metadata before the audio ever gets to Sembly. It's clunky, but it covers the gaps. Have you looked at that kind of hybrid approach?
Spreadsheets > marketing slides.