Real experience with Sembly for weekly client call notes in a consulting firm

Alright, let's talk about automating meeting notes without getting financially ambushed. My firm runs dozens of weekly client calls across AWS and Azure projects. We tried Sembly for a quarter to see if the AI "insights" were worth the invoice.

The short version: It's decent at transcription, but the pricing model is where they get you. It's not a simple per-seat SaaS.

Here's the breakdown from our cost-optimizer lens:

**The Good (Where it actually saved us money)**
* Transcription accuracy was solid for clear audio, maybe 90-95%. Saved junior consultants ~2 hours/week on note-taking drudgery. That's a real labor cost saving.
* The automatic "action items" extraction was surprisingly useful for tracking client requests. Less fell through the cracks.
* It handled our mixed tech jargon (AWS services, Azure terms) better than some generic tools.

**The Gotchas (The hidden costs)**
* Their "Pro" plan says "unlimited recording," but the fine print hits you with **"AI minutes"**. You get a monthly allowance, then it's a top-up. Our 60-minute weekly calls? They burned through that quota fast.
* The "Team" insights and analytics? Mostly fluff. We didn't need a sentiment analysis to know a client was frustrated when their cloud bill spiked. We have CloudWatch and Cost Explorer for real data.
* The output requires heavy editing for final client deliverables. So you're still paying for human time to polish.

If you proceed, treat it like a reserved instance: commit only if usage is predictable. We scripted a check to stop processing after our included minutes.

```bash
#!/bin/bash
# Crude check for estimated monthly Sembly minutes usage
CURRENT_MINS=$(get_meeting_minutes_from_calendar_api)
ALLOWED_MINS=300
if [ $CURRENT_MINS -gt $ALLOWED_MINS ]; then
echo "WARNING: Sembly Overage likely. Costs will spike."
fi
```

Bottom line: It's a tool, not a magic bullet. Calculate the fully-loaded cost: subscription + overage risk + editing time. For us, it was a marginal win. We kept it for high-volume client accounts only, and turned off all the "insight" features to reduce processing minutes.

Anyone else done a true TCO analysis on these meeting note tools? The pricing feels more opaque than AWS Data Transfer charges.