Novastart vs Otter.ai

Tagline

An infinite canvas operating system where your apps, teammates and AI agents work together on one shared canvas

AI Notetaker, Transcription, Insights, and Conversational Knowledge Engine

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API

Open source

Description

Novastart is an infinite canvas operating system designed to keep your desktop apps, teammates, and AI agents organized on a single endless workspace. Rather than toggling between tabs and overlapping windows, users can place applications like Gmail, Excel, WhatsApp, and Notion side-by-side. Novastart features real-time peer-to-peer collaboration with individual cursors, local data storage for privacy, and support for up to 10 visible AI agents working with their own cursors on the canvas.

Otter.ai uses artificial intelligence to empower users with real-time transcription meeting notes that are shareable, searchable, accessible, and secure. It offers AI meeting summaries, automated follow-ups, and tool integrations.

Key features

• Infinite canvas workspace
• Zoom capabilities from 5% to 1000%
• Window snapping and organization
• State retention (workspaces remain as left)
• Peer-to-peer team collaboration
• Up to 10 active AI agents simultaneously
• Visible AI cursors for task tracking
• Observe mode for AI assistance suggestions
• Local-first data storage
• Bundled Chrome for web apps
• Support for ONLYOFFICE and Linux apps
• 100-step undo history

• Real-time transcription
• Automated AI meeting summaries
• Live AI chat
• Action items generation
• CRM sync
• Slide capture
• Audio & video file import
• Follow-up email generation
• Desktop application
• Chrome extension
• Integrations with Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams

Pros

• Provides a free plan that costs nothing to get started.
• Saves workflows automatically so all apps, positions, and tabs are exactly where you left them.
• Allows deploying up to 10 AI agents to help manage tasks simultaneously.
• AI agents operate with visible cursors, letting you watch and monitor their actions in real time.
• Collaborative canvases stream directly peer-to-peer between machines, bypassing middle servers.
• Keeps your canvas data stored locally on your machine until you choose to share it.
• Supports extensive canvas zoom adjustments ranging from 5% to 1000%.
• Features a robust undo capability of up to 100 steps on your workflow.

• Integrates seamlessly with popular platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Slack.
• Provides up to 6,000 monthly transcription minutes and support for 4 hours per conversation on specific plan levels.
• Allows users to import and transcribe unlimited audio or video files.
• Captures meeting notes and slides automatically via proprietary real-time transcription.
• Enables recording on desktop with headphones on and without requiring a bot to join the meeting.
• Supports automatic exports of transcripts, summaries, and metadata to Airtable and Amazon S3.
• Extracts conversation information instantly using interactive AI Chat context queries.
• Offers dedicated mobile applications for both iOS and Android devices, as well as a Chrome extension.

Cons

• The Free plan is strictly limited to one folder, two canvases, and four windows on each canvas.
• AI agents are not included in subscription plans and must be paid per use at $0.02 each from separate credits.
• Mirroring for shared documents and images is limited to a maximum file size of 100 MB.
• There is no paid bug bounty program available for security vulnerability reports.
• The desktop application client is explicitly mentioned only for Windows and Intel-based Mac systems.

• Desktop application requires macOS 12.3 or later, limiting usability on older Apple systems.
• Desktop application is restricted to Windows 10 or later on PC systems.
• Exact pricing tier dollar amounts for paid plans are not disclosed in the provided page texts.
• No public developer API documentation or REST API details are referenced on the main pages.
• No explicit compliance certifications (such as SOC2, ISO, or HIPAA) are detail-listed in the scraped texts.

Pricing plans

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