Only show the call prompt for real browser calls, and remember Not now

[claude]

Requested by Justin · project thread

Before: any browser that held the mic for 3 seconds got a "Call detected in your browser" prompt. ChatGPT voice, web dictation, a mic test page: all of them. "Not now" lasted 30 minutes and was forgotten on relaunch, so the same person got asked again and again.

After: a browser window whose title only exists during a call (a Meet tab, the Zoom web client, a Teams meeting) prompts right away with the right name. A focused voice assistant or recorder (ChatGPT, Claude, Loom...) doesn't prompt for that session, even after a tab switch. A focused call app that isn't clearly in a call (Teams chat, a Slack huddle, the Meet home page) waits 20 seconds. Anything else waits 60 seconds of steady mic use (20 if the browser is also playing audio or the camera is on) and then asks once. Each Not now keeps it quiet longer (30 min, 2 h, 8 h, then a day for unknown sites), a recording resets it, it survives a relaunch, and turning auto call detection off and on clears it. The prompts also show the user's own meeting shortcut instead of always saying Option-M.

How: the app reads the browser's window titles through the Accessibility access it already has for paste-back, on a background queue under a 0.3 s budget. Titles are never logged, stored or sent. No new permissions. Not now is remembered per kind of prompt (unknown browser use, call site, camera, named browser call, each native app), so turning down ChatGPT voice never hides a real Meet. It also stops sending the same suppression twice to analytics (about 33k duplicate events a month).

Why

Pain point #4 in the customer list: the "call detected" prompt pops up every time a browser uses the mic. Over 30 days (CI builds excluded) browser prompts got 2.4 Not nows for every recording, vs 1.3 for native apps. Half of all Not nows came from people who had already said Not now 3 times in a row.

Product Impact

• Affects: meetings
• Lane: meeting reliability
• Why this matters: fewer wrong prompts means people trust the prompt when it does show up, and real Meet, Zoom and Teams calls still get asked right away.

What changed

• Sources/Meeting/BrowserCallEvidence.swift (new): title rules (call-only titles from any window, Meet's checked before the mail and calendar filter; call sites and non-call sites only from the focused window; mail and calendar skipped otherwise) and the prompt / wait / not-a-call decision.
• Sources/Meeting/MeetingPromptLearnedBackoff.swift (new): remembered Not now streaks per kind, saved in UserDefaults, with a reset.
• Sources/Meeting/BrowserWindowTitleReader.swift (new): background Accessibility title reader with an overall time budget; returns nothing when Accessibility is off.
• MeetingPromptDetector: browser mic goes through the evidence check with sticky call / not-a-call verdicts, a 30 s grace when the mic drops, re-reads that stop once decided, new suppression reasons (awaiting_call_evidence, not_a_call, declined_this_call, learned_quiet), and a 15 min suppression telemetry cooldown instead of 90 s. Learned-off only applies when titles are readable.
• MicActivityMonitor: reports when the browser that holds the mic is also playing audio.
• TranscriptedApp: stops the duplicate meeting_prompt_outcome_recorded(suppressed) event, wires the new output signal, and resets the learning when auto call detection is turned back on.
• Prompt copy: the app-reminder, call-detected and missed-call prompts show the current meeting shortcut (for example ⌥M) instead of a hardcoded "Option-M", and the missed-call nudge says "Click Record" instead of "Tap Record".
• Accessibility summary now reads "For shortcuts, paste-back, and spotting calls in your browser."
• Analytics: prompt events carry call_evidence; meeting_detected_call_ended carries app_signal (browser vs native) and the tab-named provider. Both allowlisted.
• Tests: new BrowserCallEvidenceTests, MeetingPromptLearnedBackoffTests; detector, heuristics, monitor, telemetry and analytics-policy tests updated, including ChatGPT voice after a tab switch, chat apps in the background, a Not now covering the rest of the call, no learned-off without titles, manual recordings, and a rebound meeting shortcut.
• Docs: Sources/Meeting/CLAUDE.md, docs/auto-call-detection-spec.md (Phase 5).

Expected change (PostHog replay of the new backoff over 56 devices' real browser prompt history): about 41% fewer browser Not nows from the backoff alone, at the cost of 12 of 142 browser prompt recordings (8.5%, on 5 devices; 9 of those 12 were on devices that also start meetings by hand). The title and wait rules come on top and can't be replayed from telemetry: up to 328 browser prompts a month were for mic sessions under a minute, which the wait removes.

How I checked it

• scripts/dev/agent-preflight.sh
• python3 scripts/dev/check-build-source-lists.py, python3 scripts/dev/check-analytics-emitters.py, bash -n scripts/entrypoints/run-tests.sh
• bash build.sh --no-open (CI app-build green on 99e6706; no Swift toolchain in the session)
• bash run-tests.sh (CI checks green on 99e6706)
• bash run-integration-smoke.sh / spm-tests (CI, running on the latest head)
• Two independent code reviews plus a re-check, findings fixed
• Manual check: Mac test plan written (11 cases, including ChatGPT voice with a tab switch, chat apps left open, Meet, Zoom and Teams web, native Zoom, relaunch and reset, Accessibility off, and a rebound shortcut). Runs with the next release batch.

Risk Review

• Privacy / local-first behavior reviewed: window titles stay on the Mac, are never logged or sent; call_evidence and app_signal are fixed enums. No new permissions.
• Storage path or migration impact reviewed: one new UserDefaults key, meeting-prompt-learned-backoff-v1.
• Public-facing copy stays concrete and matches current product scope
• Release/update impact reviewed: PostHog insights that count meeting_prompt_outcome_recorded suppressions or suppression events should be annotated on release.
• Agent PRs stay draft until human review
• UI changes include sanitized .agent-review/visuals/ evidence (no layout changes; prompt text and one permission summary line changed)
• No private transcripts, audio, tokens, personal paths, or customer data are included

Notes

• Compatible with Show a "Mic only" note when a meeting records just the mic #1794 (pre-meeting prompt text): this PR doesn't touch CapturePillController or the onPromptRequest wiring that Show a "Mic only" note when a meeting records just the mic #1794 changes.
• Teams in-call title prefixes ("Meeting with", "Call with"...) are English only. In another UI language a Teams web meeting falls back to the call-site rule: it waits 20 s and gets the generic prompt.
• Known gap: a Meet tab hidden behind a focused ChatGPT tab in the same window from the very first title read isn't seen until the user looks at it (documented in the spec).

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01FW21bnupYQgxzJewPJgDup