Littlebird

The main differentiator of Littlebird is that it is able to see your on-screen activity and use that as context. And unlike failed startups before them (e.g., Limitless), they don't actually take screenshots or record what you're doing; they just pull reference queues here and there as you simply use your computer. It's definitely more invasive than a normal note taker, but that's also the whole point. The best AI assistant is going to be the one with the most context. This is what that looks like in practice so far.

Something I really loved is the lack of setup friction. You do not have to sit there integrating every tool under the sun just to get some basic assistant behavior. It's pretty automatic: you just download it and let it observe. Then you can ask questions based on what happened during your day. That's what makes it feel less like a chatbot and more like a second set of eyes. Whatever you looked at, at some point, it knows. 😳

There was a moment where Slack had just been open on screen (we hadn't asked it to connect to Slack), hadn't set anything up, and Littlebird already knew what engineering had shipped that day. Which is completely insane!

At the same time, that's exactly why we made it a point to be aware of the privacy settings. This is a tool that can read everything on your screen, so we immediately thought about our analytics dashboard and financial data, things like that. That's stuff that I really don't want added to an AI's memory layer, so just a word of caution.

You can tell that Littlebird has taken a lot of inspiration from the best AI note taker on the market, Granola. We see a lot of similarities between Granola vs Littlebird. The UI is lightweight; the recorder fits into the flow of a call by prompting you to join your call (when you have a meeting starting), then it sits as a scratchpad to take your own notes while on the call.

Which has been really helpful because since Littlebird considers the bigger context layer, it can feed our Granola meeting notes into the broader questions about my day, projects, or anything that happened around a decision. Just today, I had taken notes in Granola, opened it during the day, and then later asked Littlebird what happened. It was able to reference those Granola notes because they had the best answer, so that's where the memory layer acts as a huge differentiator across all my tools.

I don't think I'd go as far as to say Littlebird beats Granola when it comes to AI notetakers, especially if all you want is purely the best meeting note taker, but Littlebird is more interesting when you're looking for something broader and need it to consider various pieces in the puzzle that is your workday.

Oh yeah, and generating the call notes after the call is suuuuuper slow as compared to other notetakers. Sometimes it froze, but it always got there. I know it takes longer because it's also taking into account all of the context and just pulling in more data overall. On the bright side, it does generally result in better notes, but it's at the cost of time.

I was running late for a call, and forgot about the context as to why we were going to meet, and just as I was about to join, Littlebird prompted me to an AI "Prep for meeting".

It actually went deeper than any other tool, as it actually knew what I was doing on X and what led to me reaching out and booking the call, along with the key areas of overlapping interest. It's moments this that make me feel like Littlebird is the future.

Littlebird allows you to run routines, like a weekly activity summary, which helps you understand where you spent your time the past week, and suggests areas of improvement. So, instead of waiting for you to ask what happened, it sends recurring updates that show where your time actually went and what kinds of work have been quietly eating up your week.

Alex just looked at his weekly summary and saw he'd spent 18 hours on technical work and QA. He knew it was a lot... but not that much! That's a huge part of the value with Littlebird.

When you can surface patterns, you can see where you're taking random ownership or getting off track, which means you get to decide on how you want to take action. In this case, if you need a new hire or want to delegate to a team member, it gives you a clear answer so you can make a clear decision on the best course of action.

We aren't the only ones who have been loving the routines feature. Lots of people who have been picking up the manual load of drafting briefs that eat up their time are seeing Littlebird's potential. The truth is, if you can find a reliable tool to automate a task or portion of your workday, then it's worth trying.

You know we love a good keyboard shortcut, and a Littlebird has one! You can ask questions from anywhere on your computer, which is exactly how a tool like this should work.

I think I've used it just about everywhere: Slack, Linear, browser, inbox, you name it. I love having the ability to ask a question on the spot without having to open another app and manually recreate the context. It's a great idea, but you do need to build the habit. It's still way easier than something like ChatGPT or Claude, where you have to bring all the context yourself.

Littlebird's shortcut is super useful, but it did take a while before it felt natural and fully embedded into my workflow.

One of the first things we did after installing Littlebird was to decide what it shouldn't see.

Since the tool is pulling context from everything on your screen by default, there are some obvious things we wanted to exclude, but especially banking apps, analytics dashboards, and anything else that felt too sensitive to hand off to a startup that's still finding its footing.

We were happy to see that Littlebird does let you exclude specific apps and sites, which goes a long way toward making the always-on context feel less exposing.

The exclusion feature exists, and it works, so you just have to be intentional about setting it up before you forget the thing is running.

Littlebird has mobile apps on both iOS and Android, which is great since Granola is currently iOS only (Android coming to Granola soon!). When we are out for walks, we will open the app and ask what happened today, and it will pull together a real answer. That's not just your meetings, but also the messages, tabs, and all the contacts you accumulated throughout the day. Being able to recall all of that on the go is something most tools just don't do yet.

It's worth mentioning that Littlebird doesn't yet pull context from your phone. That'll be impossible on iOS, due to Apple restrictions, but for Android, they said they'll possibly experiment with accessibility permissions, which would allow them to see on-screen activity.

Even with that potentially coming, the security/comfort of having it read your phone screen at all times feels a bit more violating than just the computer. I personally would be keeping that disabled even if they built that in. Overall, it's too muddy to know the context between work and personal. In general, people use phones more for personal than they do work. I'm the opposite, but even I wouldn't be able to justify it.

You can connect Littlebird to your Google Calendar and email to round out its picture of your day. It's also nice to know that the permissions it requests are read-only, so it can view your email, but it's not asking to edit or create drafts or anything like that. It's only awareness, no action, which was a big deal for us because we were initially on the fence about giving it access. Knowing it's absorbing context and not operating on my behalf was a big relief.

I find it generally impressive how Littlebird captures everything on my screen throughout the day and can build context around every tool without me having to set up any integrations. It just... knows, because you had those things open.

The perfect example of this is how it handles meeting notes. If you use Granola on a call and then pull up those notes on screen, Littlebird will absorb that too! Just the other day, we asked Littlebird what happened in a meeting, and it actually referenced our granola notes. Which was weird because I took the meeting notes in Littlebird, but it's even referencing Granola's meeting notes because I wrote additional stuff there. From that, it tells me that it's pulling from the best available source it's seen, which makes the recall feel shockingly complete and dependable. We keep seeing cognitive load mentioned and it's so real! Being able to get rid of that nervous "I'm forgetting something" feeling is so freeing.

And it's not just meetings, the same applies to other places like Slack. Everyone knows that the search in Slack is notoriously bad, so being able to ask "where did so-and-so talk about this thing?" and actually get an answer is the kind of thing that solved a real problem in my workday.