How to use an AI copilot in meetings and sales calls (the right way)

There are two different products both calling themselves "AI meeting tools," and mixing them up is why so many people end up disappointed. One is a notetaker bot. The other is a real-time copilot. They solve different problems, and only one of them helps you during the conversation.

Notetakers vs. copilots

A notetaker (Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, Read AI) joins your call as a visible participant, records everyone, and emails a transcript afterward. It's useful for the record. It also has two well-documented problems:

• The consent problem. These bots join from calendar invites and start recording, often without the host approving it. Reddit threads routinely call always-on notetakers "creepy" and "spyware with a subscription." In 2025, Otter.ai faced a class action over recording and AI-training consent, Fireflies was sued over biometric data collection, and at least one university banned Read AI over security concerns.
• It doesn't help you during the call. A transcript an hour later does nothing for the question you're being asked right now.

A real-time copilot works the other way around. It doesn't join the call as a participant. It listens alongside you on your own machine and shows talking points, context, and structure while the conversation is still happening, then hands you clean notes after. Nobody else sees it, and nobody else is recorded by a bot that wandered into the meeting.

When a real-time copilot earns its keep

• Discovery and sales calls. Objection handling, pricing, and competitor comparisons come up as soon as they're raised, so you're not caught flat by "how are you different from X?" mid-call.
• Stakeholder and client meetings. It tracks the discussion and feeds you the relevant fact, definition, or next question, so you're the most prepared person in the room without burying your head in notes.
• Interviews. Structure for behavioral answers and a clear approach for technical questions, as soon as the question lands.
• Busy group calls. When several people are talking, good copilots track who said what, so you always know what was just asked and by whom.

How to use one well

1. Give it context up front. The difference between a generic assistant and a useful one is whether it knows who you are. Feed it your résumé, your deal notes, and your product docs as a persona, so its suggestions reflect your background and the specific call rather than boilerplate.

2. Read for structure, not script. The failure mode of every AI copilot is reading its output word for word. It comes out flat, over-polished, and slightly late. Use it for the shape of the answer, the three points to hit, the number to quote, and say it in your own voice.

3. Keep your hands on the controls. You don't want to be hunting through a panel mid-sentence. A copilot worth using lets you show, hide, and drive the overlay with hotkeys you set yourself, so it's there when you want it and gone when you don't.

4. Mind latency. If guidance lands four seconds after the question, you'll either talk over it or sit in an awkward pause. Real-time has to mean real-time.

5. Stay on the right side of the rules. Use a copilot within the rules of the meeting, call, or interview you're in, and be mindful of recording-consent laws where you and the other participants are. The goal is to be more prepared and present, and never to misrepresent yourself.

Where Assistly fits

Assistly is a real-time copilot rather than a notetaker bot. It runs as a native app on macOS and Windows, listens alongside you without joining the call as a participant, and shows guidance in an overlay that's excluded from screen capture at the OS level, so it never appears in a screen share or recording. It captures the call's own audio (so it works with headphones on), separates your voice from everyone else's to track who said what, and tailors every suggestion to a persona built from your own context. Configurable hotkeys keep the overlay under your control, and every session ends with an organized summary and a clear list of action items.

It's free to start, with 3 sessions a month and the full feature set, so you can try it on a real call before deciding. Get started, or see how it stacks up against the other tools.