Keel — An AI assistant whose memory belongs to you. vs Speech To Markdown: Features, Pricing & Which Is Better (2026)
A side-by-side comparison of Keel — An AI assistant whose memory belongs to you. and Speech To Markdown — features, pricing, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which AI tool fits your workflow.
Keel — An AI assistant whose memory belongs to you.
Keel Labs
Local-first desktop assistant for Mac/Windows that stores plain Markdown on your disk and lets you swap models while keeping your context.
Key features
- Local-First Storage: Stores all assistant memory and workspace data as plain Markdown files on the user's disk to ensure portability, offline access, and easy backup/versioning with Git.
- Model-Agnostic Integration: Supports swapping between model providers (e.g., Claude, GPT, OpenRouter, Ollama) allowing users to change inference backends without losing context or notes.
- Plain Markdown Workspace: Uses human-readable Markdown as the native data format, enabling easy editing, searching, and integration with existing text-based workflows and tools.
- Cross-Platform Desktop App: Provides a native desktop experience for both macOS and Windows users optimized for local performance and file-system based storage.
- Privacy-First Design: Keeps context and memory under user control by defaulting to local storage and enabling use of local or self-hosted model endpoints.
- Bring-Your-Own-Model (BYOM): Allows connecting to local or third-party model runtimes (e.g., Ollama or OpenRouter) so users can run models they trust or prefer.
- Open Source Repository: Project source and releases are available on GitHub, facilitating community contributions, audits, and self-hosted deployments.
- Local-first desktop application for macOS and Windows
- Stores workspace and memory as plain Markdown files on the user's disk
- Bring-your-own-model: support for swapping Claude, GPT, OpenRouter, Ollama
- Context persistence on local filesystem independent of model backend
- Open-source codebase hosted on GitHub (Keel-Labs/keel)
- Plain-markdown workspace for notes, context capture, and memory organization
Best for
- Personal Knowledge Base: Maintain an evolving, searchable personal assistant memory as plain Markdown files that you control and can version with Git.
- Privacy-Sensitive Assistance: Use local or self-hosted model runtimes to run queries and keep sensitive context on-device rather than sending it to hosted services.
- Experimenting with Models: Quickly switch between model providers (Claude, GPT, OpenRouter, Ollama) to compare outputs while keeping the same conversation context and notes.
- Developer Workflows: Keep notes, prompts, and agent memory in Markdown within a repository to integrate with codebases, CI, and version history.
- Offline or Local Inference: Connect to locally running model servers (e.g., via Ollama) to generate responses without relying on external APIs.
- Content Drafting and Iteration: Draft, refine, and store content in Markdown while swapping models to explore different creative or editorial styles.
- Personal knowledge base with locally stored assistant memory
- Using different LLM providers interchangeably while keeping the same local context
- Privacy-focused workflows where sensitive context stays on the user's disk
- Developer experimentation with multiple model backends and routing
- Note-taking and organization using Markdown-backed agent memory
Speech To Markdown
xajik
Free, 100% local macOS menu-bar app that turns speech into structured markdown using whisper.cpp and any local LLM.
Key features
- 100% Local Pipeline: Runs whisper.cpp for speech-to-text and any local LLM server for structuring — no cloud calls and no API keys required.
- Global Dictation Hotkey: Press ⌘⌥] in any app to have the transcript typed straight at your cursor, works in Terminal, browser, Slack, and more.
- Agent Mode Live Structuring: A floating capsule streams your voice through the LLM into a real-time Markdown, plain text, or HTML document.
- One-Line Install: A single curl-piped script installs xcodegen, whisper-cpp, and ffmpeg via Homebrew, then builds the app from source into /Applications.
- iOS Companion: A fully offline iPhone/iPad app that uses Apple Intelligence on iOS 26+ (iPhone 15 Pro and up).
- Multiple Output Formats: Format, edit, or append the LLM output as Markdown, plain text, or HTML from a single control panel.
- Send-Now Flush: The Send (⏎) control flushes the current buffer to the LLM immediately instead of waiting for the pause/word-count threshold.
- Model Picker: Download and swap Whisper models from Settings — Base (~150 MB) is a good starting point.
Best for
- Private Meeting Notes: Dictate meeting recaps on a Mac with sensitive content that must never leave the device.
- Voice-Driven Coding Comments: Speak function docstrings or PR descriptions into your editor at the cursor via Global Dictation.
- Structured Journaling: Use Agent Mode to ramble freely and get a clean, headed Markdown document out in real time.
- Offline Field Notes on iOS: Capture voice notes on an iPhone with no signal, structured into markdown using on-device Apple Intelligence.
- Slack / Email Long-Form: Dictate long replies straight into Slack or Mail without opening a separate transcription tool.