Best Practices

A short collection of habits that consistently produce the best results in Kalima. These tips apply whether you are capturing a single interview or running transcription across a whole organization, and they cover cleaner audio, more accurate transcripts, sharper AI output, and tidier collaboration.

Recording quality

The single biggest factor in transcription accuracy is the audio Kalima receives. Clean input beats almost any other setting.

A wired microphone and a stable connection also keep your live latency low. If you record over Bluetooth headsets or virtual audio cables, expect a little extra delay, which Kalima will flag with a device advisory.

Accuracy & cleanup

Beyond clean audio, a few setup choices and one editing tool make the difference between a rough draft and a reliable record.

Set the stage before you record

• Add expected-language hints when you already know what will be spoken. Detection is automatic, but hints noticeably improve accuracy for accents and similar-sounding languages, and they handle bilingual conversations gracefully.
• Give the session context. A short description plus key names, acronyms, and jargon helps the engine get specialized vocabulary right. The quick description field holds up to 2,000 characters, so keep it concise and focused on the terms that matter.
• Reuse what works. Save context as a template for recurring meeting types, or store default language hints and context on a project so every new session starts correctly configured.

Clean up after you record

When a name or term comes through wrong, use AutoCorrect+ (Mark & Fix). Mark the word with a category, then resolve it by typing the correction yourself, asking AI to suggest a fix, or dismissing it. To fix a recurring mistake, mark one occurrence and tick also fix others. AI checks each other occurrence and only replaces the ones that are genuinely the same mistake. Corrections apply at the word level, so playback timing and karaoke highlighting stay aligned.

Getting value from AI

Once a session has transcript text, Kalima's AI tools turn it into something you can act on. A few habits make the output sharper.

• Summarize first, then chat for the gaps. Generate a summary for the overall picture, then use AI Chat for specific questions like "who owns the launch?" or "what did they decide about pricing?" Chat answers stay grounded in that session and will tell you when something isn't in the transcript.
• Clean the transcript before summarizing. AI is faithful to what was said and won't invent decisions, owners, dates, or quotes. Fixing key names and terms with AutoCorrect+ first leads to a more accurate summary.
• Regenerate after edits. A saved summary is stamped to the transcript it came from. If you edit the transcript afterward, regenerate so the summary reflects the current text.
• Mind your quotas. Summaries, chat messages, and autocorrections are metered by weekly plan limits, and each summary generation counts (including regenerations). Automatic session titles are free on every plan and are not metered.

Collaboration

Kalima gives you several ways to organize and share work. Choosing the right level keeps things tidy and secure.

Pick the right container

• Standardize with projects. Set language hints, target language, audio quality, and context once at the project level so every new session inherits them. If individual sessions drift, the project's diverged-sessions tool resets them back to the defaults in one step.
• Grant the least access needed. Give collaborators the lowest role that lets them do their job: viewer for read-only, editor to create and edit sessions, admin to manage people. The same principle applies to organization roles.

Share sessions safely

When you share a single session by link, choose who can open it deliberately:

• For sensitive recordings, set a password and an expiry so access ends on its own and stays protected in the meantime.
• Limit access to the right scope, whether a specific person by email, a whole organization, or a single team, instead of leaving it open to anyone with the link.
• Remember that only the session owner can manage sharing. Disabling a link instantly disconnects anyone currently viewing, and re-enabling later keeps the same URL.

Account & privacy

A few simple habits keep your account secure and your data under your control.

• Use a strong password. Kalima requires at least 8 characters with an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, and a number. Pick something unique, or sign in with Google to skip passwords entirely.
• Verify your email early. Verification unlocks AI features, creating sessions, and privacy actions like data export and account deletion, so do it as soon as you sign up.
• Sign out on shared devices. When you sign out, Kalima clears locally cached app data from that device, so the next person can't see your sessions.
• Know your privacy rights. You can request a copy of your data (once every 7 days, delivered in roughly 1 to 2 weeks) or permanently delete your account at any time from the Account tab.

Next steps

Ready to put these into practice? Start a session or dig into the detailed guides.