There's a thing around my neck right now. Smaller than a quarter, about as thick as a phone, with a little light on it. Most people think it's jewelry.

It's recording everything I say. And everything anyone says to me.

The strange part is not that it records. The strange part is how quickly I stopped noticing that it records.

The Reroute

The pendant is called OMI. It ships with its own app that sends your audio to their servers, runs inference somewhere, and promises to privately keep track of your thoughts and to-do lists for you.

I didn't like any of that.

The firmware is open source, so I built my own app instead. The audio streams from the pendant to my phone over Bluetooth. My phone sends it to a server in my laundry closet. From there it goes to Daedalus's private inference machine, where Whisper handles voice-to-text and diarization sorts out who said what. When a conversation is done, I click the device. It buzzes. A Telegram bot sends me the transcript.

If I'm going to tell doctors we can handle sensitive data, I should be willing to put my own conversations through the same architecture.

The First Day

For the first few hours I was careful. I could hear myself choosing words differently, editing in real time, aware of the little light under my shirt. I sounded like a person being recorded. Which is exactly what I was.

After about 24 hours I forgot it was on.

That's when it got interesting.

I tell people when it's recording. The AI people barely flinch. Usually they ask, "Are you recording right now?" I say yes. They say, "That's cool."

Then, almost immediately: "I need one."

A few ask for the transcript.

I'm still waiting for someone to be upset about it. I'm sure it's coming. It just hasn't happened yet.

The only moment that actually feels weird is when someone clocks it before I've said anything. They spot the light, or they notice the shape under my collar, and they ask. There's this split second where I'm deciding how to answer, and in that split second I realize I feel guilty, even though I was about to tell them anyway.

The Mirror

I had a few emotional conversations while wearing it. Old family stuff. My dad. The kind of things you say carefully even when no one is recording. I was talking to my partner, and I was being honest the way you're honest when you're not performing for anyone. Just saying things out loud because you need to hear yourself say them.

I wasn't thinking about the pendant. I'd forgotten it was there. That was the whole point of getting past the first 24 hours.

Later that week I fed a full day's worth of transcripts into Claude Cowork. Not looking for anything specific. Just curious what a day of my life looks like when it's written down.

I expected notes. I got a pattern back.

Some of it was hard to read. Things I said three different times to three different people that I thought were three different conversations but were actually the same conversation. Stuff I was clearly working through without realizing I was working through it.

But some of it was really good. Kind, even. Things I would never have noticed about myself, about how I show up, about what I actually care about when I'm not thinking about what I care about. I would have lost all of it if this thing wasn't hanging around my neck.

I set out to build a recording device. What I got was a mirror.

The Fight We Haven't Had Yet

Maybe it's because I like to be right. Maybe it's because I've been in a relationship before that was a bit contentious. But I keep thinking about what happens the first time my partner and I get into a real argument while this thing is on.

We could roll back the tape. Get exactly what the other person said. Word for word. No more "that's not what I said" or "you're putting words in my mouth." It's all there.

We could ask AI to be our relationship coach. Or our relationship arbiter. Or, if we're being honest about where this goes, our relationship lawyer.

Do we want that? Do we actually want to record our fights so our AI can tell us who was right?

Half of me wants the tape. The other half knows exactly why that's a bad idea.

Perfect Memory

Right now this is a nerd toy. A few thousand people, maybe, have anything like my setup. Most of them are tinkerers who enjoy building things in laundry closets.

But nothing about this stays exotic for long. The pendant is cheaper than good headphones. The firmware is free. The inference gets cheaper every month.

Perfect memory does not just help you remember. It changes the threat environment of ordinary speech. A fight with your partner, a therapy session, a conversation with your kid, a meeting with a client, all of it becomes replayable. Searchable. Excerptable.

"I never said that" starts to disappear. I'm not sure what replaces it.

I'm not outside this, making predictions. I'm wearing the thing. I'm finding out what it does to me in real time.

The pendant is on right now. I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

But I haven't taken it off.