goldfish

A pocket voice recorder that gives everyone in the room control over the retention of their own words.

1Product overview

Goldfish is a pebble-shaped recorder for long conversations with many participants, such as conferences, site visits and dinners. The device records continuously. Each participant sets the level of detail for their own words by voice, and stored material loses detail on a fixed schedule.

Behaviour

• Voice control. First-person phrases apply to the speaker’s own words: “Keep my words to just the decisions,” “You can quote me,” “Forget what I just said.” Room-wide phrases such as “This is off the record” lower the level for everyone. Nobody can raise the level for another person’s words.
• A light ring, one segment per participant. One continuous strip of 41 LEDs runs round the seam, behind a translucent TPU band, visible from every seat at a round table. Software splits the ring into one segment per voice, in order of first speech. A segment fills like a level meter and takes the level’s colour: red and full for off the record, orange and a quarter for outcomes, yellow and half for gist, green and three quarters for attributed, blue and full for verbatim. A segment brightens while its owner speaks, so several people talking at once, or two side conversations, show as several bright segments. The device has no speaker.
• One light in the eye. A single light behind the lens, powered by the microphone supply: lit exactly while the microphones can hear. Nothing else in the eye.
• The eye is a button. One press takes the whole room off the record at once, and the entire ring turns a low red glow; a second press brings the room back on, and anyone can undo that within 30 seconds by saying “no.” Holding the eye for two seconds readies the phone transfer.
• Battery on demand. At power-on, and while the eye is held, the whole ring becomes a battery gauge for three seconds.
• Physical controls. A power slide switch and a microphone slide switch on the belly flank, below the bumper band; the eye on top.
• Tap here. A contactless icon on the tail, debossed into a 0.4 mm skin, lights from behind when the device is ready for a phone.
• Scheduled forgetting. Attribution after three days, the summary after 30 days, outcomes after one year, enforced by key destruction in a secure element.
• No radio. Data leaves only through a passive NFC tag, for ten seconds after a person holds the eye, while a phone touches the tail.

Levels of detail

2Problem

AI voice recorders reached the mainstream within two years, while consent practices did not keep pace. The NPC Memo of 24 December 2025 identifies uncertainty about the later use of recorded words as the core problem, rather than recording itself.

When people don't know how our words will be captured, summarized, reused, or interpreted later, they behave rationally. We speak less. We hedge. Or we avoid the meeting on official channels and start a Signal chat.NPC Inc memo, 24 December 2025 (verbatim)

• About 11 US states require the consent of all parties to record a private conversation (RCFP).
• EU regulators classify voice as “inherently biometric personal data” (EDPB 02/2021, ¶31).
• The EU AI Act has prohibited emotion recognition in workplaces since 2 February 2025 (Art. 5(1)(f)).
• In August 2026, a US court allowed the core claims in the consolidated Otter.ai privacy case to proceed (UC Today).

3Business rationale

Resolution Co’s stated mission is to make privacy “an interoperable protocol across aware hardware and software.” The device demonstrates the protocol; the protocol is the scalable asset. The options below are analysis rather than forecasts.

Prices: TechCrunch (22 July 2025, 27 August 2025, 5 December 2025).

• Option A — open reference device and protocol licence. Publish the spoken-control grammar, the retention schedule and the ring semantics; license a certified implementation to wearable makers.
• Option B — fleets for events and regulated workplaces. Scheduled forgetting and outcomes-only modes as a hardware-enforced records-retention policy.
• Option C — consumer device without a subscription. A single price and no cloud service; thin margins.
• Option D — open-source kit and community. Public code for the retention mechanism as evidence for the privacy claims.

Recommended direction: Options D and A, with the kit as the open reference implementation of a licensable protocol; Option B as the first source of revenue.

4Requirements

5Hardware

A Radxa ZERO 3E without radio hardware, two I2S microphones, a Mini Skinny NeoPixel strip (41 LEDs) round the seam behind a translucent TPU light band, one NeoPixel Mini behind the tail icon, a single microphone-rail light in the eye, power and microphone slide switches, an eye that is also a button, an ATECC608 secure element, a PCF8523 clock with its own coin cell, an ST25DV64KC passive NFC tag and a 2,000 mAh battery, inside a 2.2 mm PETG pebble with a TPU bumper band and foot. See the Model, Print and Wiring tabs.

Build one

6Software

All processing runs on the device: voice activity detection, a keyword spotter for lowering phrases, streaming speech recognition and a 0.5B language model for summaries. A short rule engine decides the level for each participant. See the Graph and Device tabs.

7Production

A production design consolidates the breakout boards onto one circuit board, including an “eye board” with the LEDs, microphones, NFC IC, clock and secure element. The target size is about 100 × 44 × 18 mm, inside an injection-moulded PC/ABS shell. Certification as an unintentional radiator (FCC Part 15B, CE EMC).

8Open risks

• Battery life: 1.5–2.8 h of listening per charge (simulation, v01/sim). The 72-hour stream needs a different architecture (v02: low-power audio MCU, transcription only while charging).
• Ring colours must stay legible through the TPU band in daylight across a 2 m table; print a band sample before the full kit.
• Speech and summary performance on the RK3566 is unmeasured.
• Speaker separation accuracy becomes a safety property under ADR-0008.
• Voice clustering requires legal review (biometric data under GDPR and Illinois BIPA).
• The Radxa ZERO 3E is out of stock, and the NFC tag has no EU stock.

9Market comparison

10Recommended roadmap

11Backlog