pasrom/meeting-transcriber/mt-cli

Meeting Transcriber — shell-driven inspection

The dev build of Meeting Transcriber can run an embedded debug RPC server. When it's running, prefer mt-cli over asking the user "kannst du screenshot machen" / "ist das im Menü sichtbar".

When to use

• You want to know what's in the speaker DB right now → mt-cli state
• You want to verify the app is alive after a code change → mt-cli healthz
• You want to see what the user sees → mt-cli screenshot /tmp/x.png, then Read it
• You want to assert on UI structure (a Settings section exists, a control is enabled) without eyeballing a screenshot → mt-cli ui-tree --window settings
• You want to drive a control (press a toggle/button) and check the effect → mt-cli ui-press <identifier> --window settings, then mt-cli state. A Settings sidebar tab row (e.g. settings-tab-about) needs --via click — a plain press reports success without actually selecting the row
• You want to start or stop meeting watching without touching the menu bar → mt-cli watch start / mt-cli watch stop (prefer these over toggle, which flips blind)
• You want to record the microphone for an in-person meeting → mt-cli record start / mt-cli record stop. A 412 means nothing would be recorded ("No Microphone" is set, or the mic permission is denied), and it will not clear by retrying; a 409 means something else is being recorded and the request refused rather than clobber it
• You're debugging a UI bug and would otherwise have to ask the user to describe state
• You're verifying a fix end-to-end after editing code

Don't use it for production debugging — RPC is #if !APPSTORE only.

How to enable

Either persistent (preferred for repeated dev sessions):

• Settings → Advanced → toggle Local Automation API on. The server starts

immediately and survives app relaunches.

Or per-session (one-shot, e.g. for scripts/test_rpc.sh):

MEETINGTRANSCRIBER_DEBUG_RPC=1 ./scripts/run_app.sh

The app writes a 64-hex bearer token to ~/Library/Application Support/MeetingTranscriber/.rpc-token (chmod 0600). mt-cli reads it automatically — no config needed on your side.

Endpoints

Build mt-cli

From the repo root:

cd tools/mt-cli && swift build
.build/debug/mt-cli state | jq .

Failure modes

• "app is not running on http://127.0.0.1:9876" → either the dev app

isn't running, or the toggle / env flag was off when it launched. Ask the user to enable Settings → Advanced → Local Automation API, or relaunch with MEETINGTRANSCRIBER_DEBUG_RPC=1 ./scripts/run_app.sh.

• "RPC token not found" → same as above; the token is created on first

successful start.

• HTTP 401 → token rotated. Restart the app or delete the token file.
• HTTP 403 with Origin header → You're hitting it from a browser. Use curl

or mt-cli instead.

Security model

Loopback bind (127.0.0.1 only) + Origin reject + bearer token. Two-layer defense against browser CSRF and cross-user access on shared Macs. See app/MeetingTranscriber/Sources/DebugRPCServer.swift for the threat model.