Recording minutes and AI write-ups are not the same allowance

Recording and AI write-ups are different jobs. Recording captures and transcribes the source. A write-up turns meeting material into drafted minutes, decisions, and action items for human review.

Scripta measures them separately. That way, reaching one limit does not pretend the other thing disappeared.

What each allowance measures

The current recording allowances are:

An eligible extra seat adds 1,200 minutes to the shared recording pool. It does not extend the two-hour maximum for one recording.

Recording minutes answer: how much audio can this workspace capture and transcribe?

AI write-ups answer: how many meetings can the assistant turn into structured draft minutes?

Why Free can record more than it can write up

Free includes 225 recording minutes and allows up to 45 minutes in one recording. That is enough capacity for five full-length recordings at the maximum.

Free includes two AI write-ups.

The imbalance is deliberate. It lets someone preserve more meetings than the plan will automatically turn into drafted minutes. When the write-up allowance is exhausted, the recording and transcript are not removed. The next AI transformation is the thing not yet given.

This makes the boundary visible. A vague “AI notes” quota could stop capture, transcription, summarization, or extraction, and the user would not know which. Separate allowances say what continues and what does not.

Choose which meetings need structured minutes

When write-ups are scarce, spend them where structure changes what happens next:

• a meeting that made several decisions;
• a client call with commitments on both sides;
• a planning session with multiple owners and dates;
• a review where absent teammates need the reasoning;
• a discussion likely to be revisited later.

A low-stakes conversation may only need its recording and transcript. A consequential meeting benefits from a drafted summary plus proposed decisions and action items that a person can review.

That review is important. The assistant proposes structured output; it does not silently promote a transcript or approve work on the team's behalf. Consequential items carry quotes verified to exist in the transcript.

One complete meeting matters more than a teaser

A useful free allowance should let someone take a real meeting through the whole path:

1. record in the browser;
2. finish and upload the audio;
3. receive the batch transcript;
4. promote it to the meeting;
5. create an AI write-up while allowance remains;
6. review proposed decisions and action items.

On Scripta Free, one meeting can complete that path within the 45-minute recording ceiling and the available write-up allowance.

This article does not compare named competitors because their plan limits change. The durable question is better: can the free plan complete a recognizable full-length meeting, and does it say plainly which boundary you reach next?

A quota should name what stops

Limits are easier to plan around when they correspond to real stages.

If recording minutes run out, the workspace cannot transcribe more captured audio within that allowance. If AI write-ups run out, existing source material remains while the next structured draft waits for more allowance.

Nothing should look deleted merely because a transformation is unavailable. Nothing should be described as included when only the capture stage is available.

The same clarity belongs inside the resulting record. A summary is for people who were not in the room; an action item needs an owner and a date. Those are valuable transformations of source material, not synonyms for the source itself.

Preserve the source first, then spend structured write-ups on the meetings where reviewed follow-through matters most. Record from your browser or bring any transcript; either way, nothing of Scripta's ever joins the call.