Getting Started with GM Assistant

Let's walk through the steps from creating a campaign to getting your first session notes.

1. Create a Campaign

Everything in GM Assistant lives inside a Campaign. From the dashboard, add a new campaign.

Once created, open Campaign Details to provide information about your world. These details help GM Assistant understand key characters and context, and assist with handling spelling of important names and proper nouns.

You can update details between sessions, an analysis will use what is listed at the time it runs.

Example — Setting

Name: The Shattered Isles
Description: A storm-ravaged archipelago where the old Vaelthari Empire collapsed 300 years ago. Magic is rare and distrusted. The party are independent salvagers working out of the port city of Kessra.

Example — Player Character

Name: Zylvara "Zyla" Moonwhisper
Played by: Sarah
Description: She/her, half-elf Ranger. Outlander background, searching for her missing sister Lirien. Travels with a wolf companion named Dusk.

Example — Location

Name: Ironhollow
Description: A mining town carved into the cliffs above the Greystone River. Controlled by the Merchant's Compact. Currently the party's base of operations.

2. Record Your Session

You don't need special equipment, a phone placed in the center of the table is all most groups need.

• In-person: Use your phone's built-in voice recorder app. Place it on something soft to dampen table noise and turn on airplane mode to avoid interruptions.
• Online (Discord, etc.): Use Craig bot for Discord, or OBS Studio to capture desktop audio.
• Keep audio at natural speed (1x), as speeding up audio will heavily impact the quality of results.

For a full breakdown of recording options and tips, see the Recording Audio Guide.

3. Create a Session & Upload Audio

After recording your session, head back into your campaign and create a session entry for it.

1. Inside your campaign, click New Session on the sidebar
2. Give the session a name and date so you can find it later
   • Sessions are sorted by date, then name in the sidebar.
   • The session date should be the day you played the session.
3. Select your audio file(s)
4. Once selected, choose your analysis level:
   • Brief — Lower credit cost. Produces all the same sections but keeps things concise — shorter recaps, fewer extracted entities, and lighter descriptions.
   • Comprehensive — Higher credit cost. Pulls out more characters, locations, and items, and writes longer, more detailed recaps and descriptions. Best for sessions where you want thorough notes.
5. Click Upload & Analyze

GM Assistant will transcribe your audio and run it through its analysis pipeline. A typical 2–3 hour session takes around 5–10 minutes. You'll see a status indicator while it works and you can leave the page then come back later for the results.

4. Review Your Analysis

When analysis is complete, your session opens to three tabs: Analysis, Transcript, and Notes. Each serves a different purpose.

The Analysis Tab

The Analysis tab is a read-only record of what was produced from your recording. It represents the results as they were generated and is not directly editable. This preserves it as a reliable reference you can always come back to.

To work with the generated notes, use the copy buttons on each section to grab exactly what you need, or use Add to Notes to send a section's content to your Notes tab where you can freely edit it.

The Transcript Tab

The Transcript tab shows the text of what was spoken during your session, broken into timestamped segments. Depending on your campaign setup, you may see two versions:

• Raw — The transcript exactly as it came from the transcription engine, before any corrections.
• Corrected — A version with a spelling correction pass applied, using the character names, locations, and items you added in Campaign Details to fix proper nouns.

Use the transcript to verify what was captured if something in the analysis seems off, find a specific moment by searching for keywords, or review dialogue that didn't make it into the summary.

The Notes Tab

The Notes tab is where you work with your results. Use it to make corrections, cut irrelevant details, expand on things that were missed, or reorganize the content however you like. Anything copied from the Analysis tab lands here for editing.

A few buttons to know:

• Find & Replace — Search for a word or name across your notes and replace it everywhere at once. Useful for fixing spelling errors across all fields at once.
• Reset to Analysis — Replaces the current notes with a fresh copy of the analysis output, discarding any edits you've made. Use this if you want to start over from the original results.
• Clear All Notes — Wipes the notes tab entirely, leaving it blank. Use this if you prefer to copy content piece by piece from the Analysis tab.

That's It!

You're all set. After your next session, upload the recording, and GM Assistant will handle the rest.

If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to hear from you. You can find us on Discord or email us at feedback@gmassistant.app.