Getting started

Sidecue needs two things: an AI model to generate cues, and transcription to turn speech into text. Both are free to start with, and both can run entirely on your own machine if you would rather nothing left it.

The whole setup takes about 10 minutes.

Requirements: Windows 10 version 2004 (build 19041) or newer, or Windows 11. A microphone, and speakers or headphones.

1 Install

Download the installer and run it. Sidecue installs without administrator rights and appears in your Start menu.

On first launch two windows open: a small panel (the overlay) that will show your cues, and the Settings window. Start with Settings.

The cue panel and the Settings window after first launch — Two windows open on launch: the cue panel and Settings.

The trial runs for 7 days from installation. No card required. You can enter a licence key later, in the "Licence" section at the top of Settings.

2 An AI key

Sidecue uses your own account with an AI provider. We do not resell access and we add no margin — you pay the provider directly for what you use.

Start with Google Gemini. It has a free tier and does not ask for a card:

Go to aistudio.google.com
Click Get API key → Create API key
Copy the key (it begins with AIza…)

In Settings, under AI provider, leave Gemini selected, paste the key and click Save key. Then click Test connection — you should see a green confirmation.

Prefer Claude or ChatGPT? Both are supported — pick one from the list and paste the matching key. Note that they need a funded balance before they will answer at all.

Want no cloud involved? Choose Ollama, install it on your machine and pull a model with ollama pull llama3.1. No key is needed and the running cost is zero.

Keys are stored in the Windows Credential Manager, never in plain files.

3 Transcription

Under Transcription (STT), pick an engine. The default is Deepgram — it transcribes live and comes with free starting credit:

Go to console.deepgram.com
API Keys → Create a New API Key
Copy it into Settings, then click Save key

Want it fully local? Choose WhisperCpp and point Sidecue at the whisper.cpp executable and a .bin model. Audio then never leaves your computer at any stage — neither for transcription nor, with Ollama, for the cues themselves. If that is the mode you need but you would rather not set it up yourself, write to us and we will walk you through it.

The glossary field is worth filling in: client names, product names, industry terms. Transcription picks them up far more reliably, and a better transcript means better cues.

4 Audio devices

This is the one step where people go wrong, so it is worth understanding.

Sidecue listens to two sources at once:

Setting	What it captures	Choose
Microphone	your voice	the microphone you actually speak into
System audio output	the other person's voice	your speakers or headphones — the device you hear the call on

Careful: in the second field, do not pick a microphone. It must be a playback device, because Sidecue captures what comes out of it in order to hear the other side of the conversation.

The audio devices section with a microphone and speakers selected — A correctly filled-in configuration: a microphone and a playback device.

Under each dropdown there is a signal level meter. It comes alive once a session is running — if one of them stays flat after you press Start, you picked the wrong device.

Click Save settings.

5 Your first call

Go back to the overlay and click Start. From that point:

cues appear in the panel as the conversation goes on,
Ask lets you put your own question to the model at any moment,
Summarise produces a summary and action items you can export,
the counter at the top shows what the session has cost so far.

Two buttons worth knowing straight away

Button	What it does
Pause	stops everything — nothing leaves your machine
Microphone icon	mutes only you; the other person is still transcribed

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl+Alt+H`	show or hide the panel
`Ctrl+Alt+A`	ask a question
`Ctrl+Alt+P`	pause
`Ctrl+Alt+M`	mute the microphone

These work globally, including while your meeting window has focus. You never have to switch to Sidecue to use them.

Keeping costs visible

You pay your AI provider for what you use, so Sidecue makes that visible rather than leaving you to guess:

a live counter shows tokens, minutes and the estimated cost of the session,
Settings let you set a hard spending cap — once reached, the session pauses itself.

The session spending cap setting — The cap is off by default. For your first few calls it is worth setting a small one.

Privacy

API keys live in the Windows Credential Manager, never in files.
The diagnostic log does not record what was said by default — only how long it was. Full transcripts appear only if you deliberately switch that on while diagnosing a problem.
Pause (Ctrl+Alt+P) stops anything leaving your machine, immediately.
In local mode (Ollama + whisper.cpp) neither the audio nor the transcript ever leaves your computer.

Worth stating plainly: you are also capturing the other person's voice. Whether and how you tell them is your decision — that obligation sits with the person using the application.

Common problems

The panel shows no cues even though the call is running

Check the level meters in Settings. If one of them does not move, the wrong device is selected — go back to step 4. The usual cause is a microphone chosen under "system audio output" instead of speakers.

Cues arrive with a delay

That is expected with chunked engines (WhisperApi, whisper.cpp) — they need a moment of silence to detect the end of an utterance. Deepgram streams live and reacts faster.

A rate-limit error from the AI provider

Free tiers can be tight. In Settings, switch on "Only answer the other party's questions" — Sidecue then speaks up less often and stays within the limit.

It says the trial has ended

The trial runs 7 days from installation. Licences are available at sidecue.io; the key arrives by e-mail and goes into the "Licence" section at the top of Settings. One licence covers two computers.

I am changing computers

Click Deactivate in Settings on the old machine. That frees the slot and the same key activates elsewhere.

Windows N or KN edition

These editions ship without media codecs. Install the Media Feature Pack from Microsoft.

The firewall asks for permission when I enable the phone view

Allow it for private networks. This only affects viewing cues on your phone over the same Wi-Fi network.

Need a hand?

Write to [email protected]. If it concerns how the application behaves, include the version — it is in the Settings window title — and describe what happens.

We may also ask for the log file from %APPDATA%\Sidecue\sidecue.log. By default it contains no conversation content, only a record of what the application did.