This guide installs apps on your Mac (Trillian and Claude Code). Those apps don't run on iPhone or iPad, so the wizard only works on a Mac.
Open this URL in your Mac's browser to continue:
https://deep-thought.cloud/en/onboarding/
About 30 minutes, on your Mac. We'll walk you through each step.
You've heard of APIs but you don't write curl commands. You use Word locally on your Mac, not VS Code. You want AI to do useful things with your recordings and notes — without becoming a developer to make it happen.
By the end of this guide you'll record a voice memo on your iPhone and watch a clean transcript appear automatically in a folder on your Mac.
That's the flow. We'll install one piece at a time over the next 9 steps. If you get stuck, email support@deep-thought.cloud.
record-me is the iPhone app where your voice memos start their journey. It records audio, sends it to Deep Thought, and shows you the transcript when it's ready.
Sign in with Apple is the only sign-in option. There's no separate password to remember — your Apple ID is your account.
Let's make sure record-me works before going further. We'll do a 10-second test recording.
Open app.deep-thought.cloud in your iPhone's browser, sign in with Apple, and look for your test recording in the list. If it's there, the iPhone half of the system works.
If you don't see it within 2 minutes: the recording didn't reach Deep Thought. Check that record-me has internet (try the recording again on Wi-Fi). If still missing, email support@deep-thought.cloud with a screenshot.
A vault is just a folder on your Mac that holds your notes as plain text files (markdown). Trillian will write transcripts here. You can open and edit the files with whatever tool you prefer — VS Code, Sublime Text, BBEdit, nano, or Obsidian if you want graph views and wiki links. The vault doesn't care.
⌘ ⇧ H)vault (right-click → New Folder, or ⌘ ⇧ N)vault/<your-name>That's it. The path you'll use later is ~/vault/<your-name>/ (replace <your-name> with whatever you named your subfolder).
You don't have to install anything to read the files — TextEdit on your Mac will open them. But if you want a nicer experience:
All three open the same files. Pick whichever feels comfortable. You can change later — the vault is just folders and text files; nothing locks you in.
Claude Code is a command-line tool that lets you chat with Claude (Anthropics AI) and have it work with your files. We use it to install and update core-skills in the next step.
Press ⌘ Space to open Spotlight, type terminal, and hit Enter. A window with a dark or white background and text in it should open.
Click Copy below, click into the Terminal window, paste with ⌘V, then press the Enter key. The installer downloads Claude Code and puts it on your path — no Node.js, no npm, no sudo.
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
Wait until you see Installation complete! at the bottom. That can take 30–60 seconds.
Look at the last lines the installer printed. If you see a yellow Setup notes warning saying ~/.local/bin is not in your PATH, copy the line below, paste it into Terminal, and press Enter:
echo 'export PATH="/Users/tomasandre/.local/bin:/Users/tomasandre/.antigravity/antigravity/bin:/Users/tomasandre/bin:/Users/tomasandre/.local/bin:/Users/tomasandre/.rbenv/shims:/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/System/Cryptexes/App/usr/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/var/run/com.apple.security.cryptexd/codex.system/bootstrap/usr/local/bin:/var/run/com.apple.security.cryptexd/codex.system/bootstrap/usr/bin:/var/run/com.apple.security.cryptexd/codex.system/bootstrap/usr/appleinternal/bin:/opt/pmk/env/global/bin:/Library/Apple/usr/bin:/Users/tomasandre/.claude/plugins/cache/claude-hud/claude-hud/0.0.11/bin"' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc
If you did not see that yellow warning, skip this step — you are good to go. After running the line you wont see any output, and that is fine; the next prompt is your sign that it worked.
Type the word claude and press Enter:
claude
The first time you run it, Claude Code asks a few setup questions. Heres what to expect and what to pick:
1 for Yes, proceed and Enter. (Your home folder is safe.)> or ❯ with a blinking cursor, Claude Code is ready.You do not need to chat with Claude Code yet — well do real work with it in step 6. Type /exit and press Enter to leave for now.
core-skills is a collection of small skills that Claude Code uses to organise your vault. It's a folder of files we clone from GitHub and then symlink into Claude Code's settings.
Make a folder for your repos:
mkdir -p ~/repos && cd ~/repos
Clone the core-skills repo:
git clone https://github.com/tandregbg/core-claude-skills.git core-skills
Symlink it into Claude Code's skills folder:
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && ln -sf ~/repos/core-skills/skills/* ~/.claude/skills/
Start Claude Code:
claude
Inside Claude Code, type /help and press Enter. You should see a list of commands including ones starting with /cr, /goals, and others. That's core-skills loaded.
Type /exit to leave.
If git clone fails with "command not found", install it with xcode-select --install (a system dialog will pop up — accept it).
This is a hand-over step. The next part needs a Trillian sign-in password that you'll request by email and receive a reply with your credentials.
Why a separate password? record-me uses Sign in with Apple, but Trillian connects to Deep Thought through a different mechanism that needs a username + password. A self-serve flow is being built; until it ships, support handles the request manually.
Replies during business hours typically arrive within a few minutes. Outside business hours expect a delay — feel free to come back to step 7 later in the day.
Trillian is a small menubar app that watches Apple Voice Memos on your Mac, uploads new recordings to Deep Thought, and writes transcripts into your vault. It also pulls down recordings you made on your iPhone.
Click the link below. A zip file will download.
Download Trillian (zip, ~3 MB)
Trillian-1.6.0-alpha.2.zip to unzip it. You'll get Trillian.appTrillian.app into your Applications folder (Finder sidebar → Applications)macOS marks downloaded apps as suspicious by default. We'll remove that mark with one Terminal command. Open Terminal again (⌘ Space, type terminal), then run:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Trillian.app
The command produces no output if it worked — that's normal.
Why this step? The Trillian app is signed but not notarised by Apple yet (we're working on it). Without un-quarantining, macOS would block it from opening with a scary message. The command tells macOS "yes, I trust this one".
⌘ ⇧ A in Finder)Trillian needs to read Apple Voice Memos files, which live in a protected folder. macOS will prompt you the first time, but if it didn't, do this manually:
Open System Settings → Privacy → Full Disk Access
If sign-in succeeds, the menubar icon will stop showing a warning dot.
You probably already have some recordings on your iPhone (the test from step 3, plus anything else you've recorded). Trillian's Sync from Deep Thought feature pulls all of them down into your vault as text files, so your local copy matches what's in the cloud.
Open Finder, go to your vault folder (~/vault/<your-name>/_inbox/), and you should see one .md file per recording. Open one with TextEdit or VS Code — you'll see the transcript inside.
This sync costs 1 credit regardless of how many recordings get pulled. Future captures cost 1 credit each, but the bulk first-time sync is one bundled charge so a long history doesn't drain your starter credits.
If the Sync button isn't there, your Trillian is too old. Update via Trillian → Check for Updates… in the menubar — the latest version (1.6.0-alpha.2) ships this feature.
The full system: record on your Mac, get the transcript in your vault. Let's prove it works end-to-end.
⌘ Space → type voice memos).md file appears in ~/vault/<your-name>/_inbox/ with your transcriptIf you want to see the pipeline live:
~/vault/<your-name>/_inbox/, and watch for new filesIf the file doesn't appear within 2 minutes: open Trillian's Settings → Captures tab and check the recent captures list. Each capture has a status — done, processing, failed, or paywalled. failed or paywalled: email support@deep-thought.cloud with the status. processing: just wait a bit longer.
That's it. You now have:
~/vault/<your-name>/) where everything lands as plain text files you fully own~/vault/<your-name>/ in Finder. Open the .md files in TextEdit, VS Code, Obsidian — whatever you like. Search them with Spotlight (⌘ Space).cd ~/vault/<your-name> && claude, and ask in plain English: "Make a list of every recording from this week." Claude reads the files and answers.Email support@deep-thought.cloud describing what happened. If you can include a screenshot or the contents of ~/vault/<your-name>/_inbox/, even better.
You've just set up Claude Code on the terminal — that's one way. There's another: MCP (Model Context Protocol). It connects Claude Desktop, claude.ai in a browser, or Claude Code in any project to your Deep Thought knowledge base. Three or five minutes more, depending on which client.
Welcome aboard. Hope it's useful.