Pocket Libre

Liberate your Pocket AI recorder from the cloud.

Pocket Libre replaces the vendor app for your Pocket AI voice recorder. It pulls recordings off the device over Bluetooth, transcribes them locally with Whisper, works out who was speaking, and summarizes with your own API key.

Your conversations never touch anyone else's servers.

pip install -e . && pocket-libre setup && pocket-libre web

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Why

The Pocket is good hardware wrapped in a subscription. The vendor app uploads your audio, transcribes it on their servers, and charges $79–179 a year for the privilege.

The device itself does none of that. It stores MP3 files and hands them over when asked. So this asks it directly.

	Pocket Pro	Pocket Libre
Transcription	Their servers	Local Whisper, your CPU
Summarization	Cloud, mandatory	Claude Haiku, ~$0.02/recording
Where your audio lives	Their infrastructure	Your disk
Annual cost	$79–179	~$5 in API credits
Works offline	No	Yes (except summaries)

Transcription and speaker identification run entirely on your machine. Summarization is the only step that touches the network, and you can skip it. You still get timestamped, speaker-labeled transcripts.

Requirements

• Python 3.10 or newer
• A Pocket recorder (PKT01; see firmware compatibility)
• Bluetooth LE support
• The device's 16-character session key (see below)

Firmware compatibility

Firmware matters more than you would expect — the device's WiFi behaviour differs enough between versions that a sequence confirmed on one can strand another. Check yours with pocket-libre status.

	1.3.3	1.7	1.8
Scan, connect, authenticate	Works	Works	Works
Status, storage, file listing	Works	Works	Works
BLE download (download, sync, watch)	Works	Works	Works
Transcribe, diarize, summarize, web UI	Works	Works	Works
WiFi AP handshake	Works	Works	Works
WiFi file transfer (wifi-transfer)	Untested	Works (WiFi firmware V9)	Works (WiFi firmware V9)

The 1.7 results come from a field report (#9) on WiFi firmware V9.

Everything works on firmware 1.7 and 1.8. The BLE path is slower (tens of KB/s on 1.8, as little as 3–4 KB/s on 1.3.3) but it is what download, sync and watch use. wifi-transfer pulls recordings over the device's WiFi access point at about 1 MB/s; see WiFi transfer.

WiFi transfer works on firmware 1.7 and 1.8, and wifi-transfer refuses other firmware unless you pass --force; it then restarts the access point for every file, which works on both known versions. On 1.3.3 the BLE side looks the same, but nobody has tried it.

Other firmware versions are untested. If you have one, pocket-libre status and pocket-libre explore output would be genuinely useful in an issue.

Install

git clone https://github.com/shahcolate/pocket-libre.git
cd pocket-libre
pip install -e .

Speaker identification is optional and pulls in PyTorch:

pip install -e ".[diarize]"

Setup

pocket-libre setup

The wizard scans for your device, asks for your session key and API keys, and writes everything to ~/.pocket-libre/config.toml with mode 600. After that you never pass --address or keys on the command line again.

Pairing without the vendor app

A device takes the first session key it is sent after a hardware reset and refuses every other one from then on. pocket-libre pair uses that to pair a device with a new random key of its own, so you need neither the vendor app nor a packet capture:

1. Hardware-reset the Pocket: triple-click the side button (the LED blinks red), then press and hold it until the red blinking stops. The LED then pulses blue.
2. Make sure no phone is connected to it, then run:

pocket-libre pair

It finds the Pocket, pairs it, and saves its address and the new key to the config. A config it replaces is kept next to it as config.toml.<date-time>.bak. The vendor app can't connect to a device paired this way until it is reset and paired in the app again (which in turn locks out this key).

Getting your session key

To keep using the vendor app alongside pocket-libre, use the key the app pairs with instead. The 16-character session key authenticates the BLE connection. The vendor app sends it as the first key after pairing, so you need to capture it once from an HCI trace.

macOS/iOS. Use PacketLogger, which ships with Additional Tools for Xcode. Start a capture, open the vendor app, let it connect, then search the trace for APP&SK&.

Android (easiest). The vendor app writes an analytics event containing distinct_id, a 28-character account ID whose first 16 characters are the session key. No packet capture needed:

adb logcat | grep -i distinct_id

Android (packet capture). Enable Bluetooth HCI snoop log in Developer Options, connect with the vendor app, then pull btsnoop_hci.log and open it in Wireshark. Note that the snoop log inside an ordinary bug report is not sufficient — it truncates every ACL packet to 15 bytes, leaving 3 bytes of ATT payload, so APP&/MCU& frames are unreadable. Set Bluetooth HCI snoop log to Full, restart the Bluetooth stack, and take the capture from there.

pocket-libre sniff won't find it for you. It only sees notifications on its own connection, and the key is something the app writes.

The session key is per-account, not per-device, and its first 8 characters are your device's WiFi AP password. See SECURITY.md for what that means for you. Both findings come from #4.

Full protocol details are in PROTOCOL.md.

Use

Web interface

pocket-libre web

Opens http://127.0.0.1:8265. You get device status, one-click download and processing, an audio player, transcripts, summaries, mind maps, and a chat box for asking questions about any recording.

The web interface has no authentication. It binds to localhost by default. Keep it there. Passing --host 0.0.0.0 hands your transcripts and your device to everyone on the network.

Command line

pocket-libre status                 # Battery, firmware, storage
pocket-libre list                   # What's on the device
pocket-libre sync                   # Download + transcribe + summarize everything new
pocket-libre watch                  # Same, but automatically whenever the device appears
pocket-libre process --input x.mp3  # Process an audio file you already have
pocket-libre delete --downloaded    # Free up space: remove what's safely downloaded

Leave watch running and recordings sync themselves whenever the Pocket comes in range. It backs off to five-minute checks while the device is away, so it isn't scanning flat out all day.

Freeing up space on the device

pocket-libre delete --downloaded removes from the device every recording that has a complete copy on your disk, and keeps everything else. Deleting can't be undone, so "complete" is strict: the copy must be exactly the size the device announced when it was downloaded, and the device must still list the recording with the same length. Copies from older versions of pocket-libre, or from the web UI, don't count and are kept. It lists what it will delete and asks first (--yes skips the question).

sync, download-all and wifi-transfer take --delete-after to do the same once they finish. To delete one recording, use pocket-libre delete --date 2026-10-03 --timestamp 20261003143216.

All commands

Command	Description
setup	Interactive setup wizard
pair	Pair a reset Pocket with a key of its own, without the vendor app
web	Launch the web interface
watch	Auto-sync whenever the device is in range
config	View or edit configuration
scan	Find nearby BLE devices
status	Device battery, firmware, storage
list	List recordings on device
usb	Show or set USB mass storage mode (on, off, status)
download	Download one recording
download-all	Download every recording
delete	Delete recordings from the device: one, or every one already downloaded (--downloaded)
sync	Download, transcribe, and summarize what's new
process	Process an existing audio file
transcribe	Transcribe locally with Whisper
convert	Convert raw audio to WAV
wifi-transfer	Download over WiFi instead of BLE, about 1 MB/s (details)
wifi-discover	Sweep the device's WiFi AP for listening sockets (diagnostic)
explore	Dump GATT services and characteristics
sniff	Subscribe to all BLE notifications
probe	Probe write characteristics

Every command takes --help.

Configuration

~/.pocket-libre/config.toml:

[device]
address = "YOUR-DEVICE-ADDRESS"
session_key = "YOUR-SESSION-KEY"

[api]
anthropic_key = "sk-ant-..."
hf_token = "hf_..."

[output]
directory = "~/Pocket Libre"

[defaults]
whisper_model = "base.en"
summary_style = "meeting"

[analysis]
enabled = "summary,entities"

Set values directly with pocket-libre config --set device.address=.... Resolution order is CLI flag → environment variable → config file → default, so ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in your shell overrides the file.

API keys

Key	What it does	Cost	Where
Anthropic	Summaries, entity extraction, mind maps, chat	~$0.02/recording	console.anthropic.com
HuggingFace	Speaker identification via pyannote	Free	huggingface.co

Both are optional. Without an Anthropic key you still get local transcription. Without a HuggingFace token, speaker labeling falls back to Claude, and then to a single unnamed speaker.

That cost estimate assumes Claude Haiku 4.5 at $1 and $5 per million input and output tokens, on a half-hour recording with summary, entities, and mind map all enabled. Every command prints what it actually spent.

Protocol

The Pocket speaks a plain ASCII command protocol over BLE GATT, and the audio is ordinary MP3 at 16 kHz mono, around 32 kbps. No encryption, no DRM, no proprietary codec. PROTOCOL.md has the full command reference.

WiFi transfer

On firmware 1.7 and 1.8 the device can raise a WiFi access point and serve recordings over it at about 1 MB/s, instead of the tens of KB/s that BLE manages. An hour of audio (about 14 MB) takes 15–20 s instead of many minutes.

# Every recording not downloaded yet, into <output dir>/<date>/<timestamp>.mp3
pocket-libre wifi-transfer

# Only recent ones
pocket-libre wifi-transfer --since 2026-10-01

# One recording
pocket-libre wifi-transfer --date 2026-10-03 --timestamp 20261003143216

What it does:

1. Connects over BLE and authenticates. It checks the firmware (1.7 or 1.8) and the battery (above 10%).
2. Raises the device's access point and moves this machine's WiFi onto it. The network is hidden and WPA2-protected; its password is the first 8 characters of your session key.
3. Requests each recording as a BLE transfer and switches it to WiFi, which is how the vendor app does it, then saves the file. The device serves two files per access-point session on 1.8 and one on 1.7, so the AP is restarted in between (about 15 s each time).
4. Lowers the access point and puts this machine back on its usual network. It does this after errors and Ctrl-C too.

Requirements and caveats:

• Joining the network automatically needs NetworkManager on Linux, or netsh on Windows. On macOS, or with --wifi manual, the command prints the network name and password, and you join it yourself while it waits. The network is hidden, so on macOS that's Other Network… in the WiFi menu, once per access-point session: before every file on firmware 1.7.
• While it runs, this machine has no internet over WiFi. With Ethernet connected you keep internet over the cable. On Linux, the temporary profile doesn't take over the default route.
• The temporary profile holds the AP password while it exists (NetworkManager or Windows profile store). It's deleted when the command ends.
• Close the vendor app first. The device takes one BLE connection at a time.

How the transfer works on the wire is in PROTOCOL.md.

Troubleshooting

The device stopped responding over BLE after a WiFi command. This was reported on firmware 1.8 when raising the access point by hand (#4), and APP&WIFIC can't recover it because BLE is already gone. Power-cycle the device physically: hold the power button until it switches off, then turn it back on. It will start advertising again. Nothing on the device is lost; recordings are on its internal storage.

The device isn't found right after a WiFi transfer. Give it up to a minute before the next run: right after a session it sometimes drops new BLE connections. Also check that the vendor app hasn't reconnected in the background.

wifi-transfer can't join the network. The access point is hidden, so it won't show up in a WiFi scan; that is expected. On Linux, check that NetworkManager manages your WiFi interface (nmcli device), or pick one with --iface. As a fallback, --wifi manual lets you join it yourself.

pocket-libre scan finds nothing. Make sure the device is on and not connected to the vendor app — it accepts one BLE connection at a time, so force-quit the phone app first. On Linux, BLE scanning usually needs bluetoothd running and your user in the bluetooth group.

Authentication fails. The session key is per account, not per device, so a key captured from one phone works for every device on that account — but it changes if you sign in as someone else. Re-capture it with the logcat method. Keys are 16 characters.

Downloads are slow. That is expected over BLE: tens of KB/s on firmware 1.7 and 1.8, and 3–4 KB/s on 1.3.3. On 1.7 and 1.8, pocket-libre wifi-transfer runs at about 1 MB/s. Otherwise, pocket-libre watch runs in the background and syncs new recordings as they appear.

A download came back short. The device occasionally drops a transfer. download retries on its own; if it keeps failing, move the device closer and close the vendor app. Partial files are never left behind under the final name.

Transcription is slow or runs out of memory. Whisper model size is the lever: pocket-libre config --set defaults.whisper_model=base.en is much lighter than large. Diarization needs PyTorch and a HuggingFace token; without them the pipeline falls back to a heuristic speaker split.

Something else. Open an issue with the output of pocket-libre status and your firmware version — and scrub your session key, which is also your device's WiFi password.

Status

• BLE scanning and device discovery
• Full command protocol (APP&/MCU&)
• Device status, file listing, downloads
• MP3 capture and playback
• Local Whisper transcription
• Speaker diarization (pyannote, with Claude and heuristic fallbacks)
• Claude summarization, entity extraction, mind maps, chat
• Web interface
• Config file and setup wizard
• Auto-connect and background sync (watch)
• WiFi AP handshake (BLE side), firmware 1.8 sequence
• WiFi transfer socket (TCP 8475) and stream format decoded (firmware 1.8)
• WiFi transfer confirmed on firmware 1.7 (one file per access-point session)
• wifi-transfer over WiFi, with automatic join on Linux and Windows
• Deleting recordings from the device, only when a verified copy is on disk
• USB mass storage mode on and off (usb)
• Copying recordings over USB once the device is in mass storage mode
• Several files over one WiFi connection
• WiFi transfer on other firmware

Contributing

Pull requests welcome. The things that would help most right now:

1. Try wifi-transfer on other firmware (anything but 1.7 and 1.8, with --force) and report what happens: pocket-libre status output, and whether the AP came up and the files arrived.
2. Test on other firmware. Run pocket-libre explore and share the output.
3. Report protocol differences. Capture with PacketLogger and open an issue.

CONTRIBUTING.md covers development setup and how to run the tests.

Legal

This project reverse-engineers a Bluetooth protocol for personal interoperability, protected under DMCA Section 1201 exemptions. Nothing here circumvents DRM, because there is none; the audio is unencrypted MP3. You own your device. You own your recordings.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.