The category
Podcast live intelligence
Live intelligence is the right information appearing on screen while you're still talking. Not in the edit, not in a prep doc you can't scan mid-sentence. During. The name you blanked on, the episode where your guest argued the opposite, the figure you're about to quote wrong.
The term is new. The idea is seventy years old, and every live broadcast you've ever watched runs on it.
The moment it exists for
Your guest is deep into a story and the perfect callback is right there. An episode from two years ago. The exact number. And then it's gone. You say "that's really interesting," the conversation moves on, and the best thing in that episode never gets said.
That isn't a memory failure. You're listening, tracking where the conversation is heading, watching the clock, and deciding what to ask next, all at once. Recall is the first thing to go under that load. And it gets worse as you get better, because a host with three hundred episodes is sitting on an archive far too large to hold in their head, which means the thing that should be their biggest advantage is the thing they can least reach.
Television solved this in the 1950s. Control room, rundown, a producer whose whole job is handing the person on camera what they need slightly before they need it. Podcasting got better microphones, remote recording, AI editing, automatic clips. Nobody built the control room.
What counts, and what doesn't
Three things have to be true. Miss one and you have a different product.
- During
- It happens while the recording is running. A transcript you read tomorrow is a record. A doc you wrote last night is prep. Neither one helps at the moment you blank.
- Silent
- It makes no sound and touches nothing in your signal chain. Everything arrives as text on a screen you can glance at. Your guest doesn't know it's there.
- Yours
- It knows your show. Your back catalog, your guests, the things you saved during the week. A general answer engine can tell you who won the 1998 World Cup. It cannot tell you what you said about batteries in episode 142.
Most tools sold to podcasters live on the other side of the recording. Transcription, editing, show notes, clips, repurposing. All useful, all post-production. They make the episode you already recorded better. They can't change what you say while you're saying it.
How it works in practice
Here's the shipped version, end to end. Nothing below is on a roadmap.
- 01
It listens to the session
The Tally desktop app takes the inputs you point it at and transcribes the room as you talk, live. It sits alongside your recording setup instead of inside it, so your tracks are untouched and your workflow does not change.
- 02
Your archive is the source
Point Tally at your RSS feed and every published episode gets transcribed and indexed by what was actually said. That is the corpus the live layer searches. Saved articles, clips and screenshots from your media library are in there too.
- 03
The answer appears on your screen
Ask out loud, the way you would ask a producer, and the answer streams onto the host view. When you do not ask, it is still listening: the guest bio the second you stall on a name, the old episode where you argued the opposite, the number that has moved since you last quoted it.
- 04
Your producer gets a seat
If someone else is in the booth, they run their own screen. Same transcript, same feed, plus the ability to push media and keep the rundown moving. You stay in the conversation and never break eye contact.
- 05
The room gets a screen
A stage display for in-person sessions: episode artwork while people settle, a tally light so everyone knows you are live, and full-screen media the moment your producer sends it over.
Everything runs off the same index. The archive that makes prep useful is the archive the live session searches, which is why live intelligence isn't a feature you can bolt onto a recorder. It needs to already know your show.
Who it's for
Long-form interview hosts
Two-hour episodes, a guest with a twenty-year career, and a back catalog too big to hold in your head. The bigger your archive, the more it can give you back.
Producers
You already do this job with a notepad and hand signals. This is the console version: watch the transcript, catch the thing the host missed, queue the clip, move the segment along.
Presenters and speakers
A session does not have to be an episode. Panels, briefings, live Q and A, anything where you are talking to a room and someone asks a question you half know the answer to.
It's worth the least to scripted shows. If every word is written before you sit down, you already know what comes next, and there's nothing for it to catch.
Questions people actually ask
Does Tally record my podcast?
No. It captures no tracks, edits no audio, and publishes nothing. Whatever you record with today, keep recording with it.
Does it work with Riverside, Descript, or Castmagic?
Yes, alongside them. They record, edit, and turn finished episodes into clips and show notes. Tally works during the session instead of after it, so the two do not collide.
Is this an earpiece?
No. Broadcast uses talkback because the anchor is looking at a camera. You are looking at a screen anyway, so the information goes there. Nothing is ever played into your ears or into the recording.
Will my guest or my listeners notice?
There is nothing to notice. No audio, no notification sounds, no change to what gets recorded. The only visible difference is that you stop losing the callback.
Do I need hundreds of episodes for this to be useful?
It gets better with a deeper archive, and a new show still gets prep briefs, guest research, and a searchable media library from day one. Live sessions work either way.
What do I need to run it?
A Mac for the live session, since the desktop app is macOS first. Prep, archive search, and your library run in the browser. Tally is invite only while we onboard shows one at a time.
Try it on your own archive
Tally is invite only while we onboard shows personally. Leave your email and we'll reach out as spots open. Founding members keep half off, for as long as they stay.