The words behind a private memory.
This glossary defines the terms used across Earlyn's site and app, from screen memory and OCR to MCP, speaker diarization and word error rate, in one sentence each.
Updated Read as Markdown
Screen memory
A searchable record of what was on a computer's screen, kept as pictures and the text read from them. More.
Moment
In Earlyn, one stored record: a picture of the screen, the text read from it, the app, the window title, the web address and the time. More.
OCR (optical character recognition)
Reading text from a picture. Earlyn uses Apple's on-device Vision framework when an app exposes no text through Accessibility. More.
Accessibility API
The macOS interface that lets assistive software read the text and structure of windows. Earlyn uses it to read exact on-screen text, never from password fields.
Semantic search
Finding results by meaning rather than by matching words, by comparing vectors (embeddings) of the question and the stored text. More.
Embedding
A list of numbers that represents the meaning of a text; texts with similar meanings have similar embeddings.
On-device model
An AI model that runs on your own computer, so the question and the data never leave it.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
An open protocol that lets AI assistants such as Claude Code call tools; Earlyn ships a local MCP server so agents can search your memory. More.
Speaker diarization
Telling apart who spoke when in a recording. Earlyn does it on the Mac from voice characteristics. More.
Word error rate (WER)
The share of words a transcription gets wrong: substitutions, deletions and insertions divided by the number of reference words. More.
SQLCipher
An encrypted edition of the SQLite database. Earlyn's database is a SQLCipher file opened with a random 256-bit key from the keychain. More.
AES-GCM
An authenticated encryption method: it keeps data secret and detects tampering. Earlyn seals screen pictures and meeting audio with it. More.
Redaction
Replacing secrets such as API keys, tokens or card numbers with a placeholder before anything is stored.
Retention window
How long memories are kept before they are deleted automatically: the trial week, or 90 days on Pro.
Skill (SKILL.md)
A Markdown file of instructions an AI coding agent loads for a task. Earlyn writes skills from your work and offers reviewed ones in its Skills Market. More.
Daily digest
A short written summary of the previous day that Earlyn produces each morning from your screen and meeting history. More.
Read next
- Feature · RewindRewindRewind is Earlyn's timeline of your screen: it keeps a picture and the text of every moment your screen changes, so you can scroll back through your day and find anything you saw on your Mac.
- Feature · AI agentsMemory for AI agentsEarlyn gives AI coding agents a memory: one click registers a local MCP server in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf or Gemini CLI, so they can search what you saw and heard and ask Earlyn questions, over 127.0.0.1 only.
- Research · October 2026Turkish speech-to-text on a MacOn 60 Turkish clips from Google's FLEURS test set, Whisper large-v3-turbo transcribed with an 8.2% word error rate against 10.9% for Qwen3-ASR 1.7B, both running locally on an Apple M2 Mac with 8 GB of memory.