Shadow vs Raycast AI
Jude Mercer, SEO and Content, Memoe — 15 October 2026
Memoe is an agent you talk to, and it talks back. It lives in your Mac's notch instead of in a chat window, so you can talk to it from whatever app you're in. It runs on the AI you already pay for — your Claude subscription through Claude Code, or your ChatGPT plan — so there's no new model to buy. Underneath, it runs Hermes Agent, the open-source agent harness from Nous Research, and it keeps a memory of you in plain files on your Mac that you can read, edit and delete.
These two start from different jobs. Shadow began as a bot-free meeting notetaker — it detects a call, records and transcribes it on your Mac, and turns the result into notes — and added on-demand "Action Skills," triggered by a keyboard shortcut anywhere on the Mac, for voice typing and screen-aware replies. Raycast AI is the AI layer bolted onto Raycast, a keyboard launcher, with dictation as one Pro feature inside a wider set of chat, agents and automations. The overlap is real: both trigger by keyboard shortcut, both turn speech into text, and both can use what's on your screen as context. The table below is each one's own description of itself. What Memoe does is set out after the table.
What each one's own source says
Everything below about Shadow comes from shadow.do and shadow.do/pricing, read 15 October 2026. Everything about Raycast AI comes from raycast.com/ai and raycast.com/pricing, read the same day.
| Shadow | Raycast AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Core job | "Shadow — The interface AI needs. One that sees, hears, and runs" — "Bot-free AI meeting notes for Mac. I record any call without a bot, transcribe on your Mac, and save notes as Markdown you own" (shadow.do, read 15 October 2026). | "Raycast AI uses the tools you already rely on to get work done" — an AI layer inside the Raycast launcher, built from AI Chat, custom Agents, scheduled Automations and AI-connected Extensions (raycast.com/ai, read 15 October 2026). Not built as a meeting or dictation tool; dictation is one listed feature of it (next row). |
| Meeting notes | "Shadow auto-starts and ends with your call, transcribes every word, and detects meeting screens to capture screenshots — so nothing slips by," across "Zoom, Slack, Teams, Meet, Webex, Discord," with Meeting Skills that turn the result into "meeting notes, BANT breakdowns, action items, follow-up emails, customer feedback summaries — or anything else you can describe in a prompt" (shadow.do, read 15 October 2026). | Not offered as a built-in feature — its only appearances on the page are a sample custom-agent name ("Meeting Prep") and an unrelated extension-store link, not a transcript product like Shadow's Meeting Skills (raycast.com/ai, read 15 October 2026). |
| On-demand voice action | "Action Skills run on demand from anywhere on your Mac, triggered by a keyboard shortcut — for voice typing, quick replies, or any task that uses what's on your screen and what you say," and every Skill is a prompt "yours to edit, or write from scratch" (shadow.do, FAQ, read 15 October 2026). | One Pro-only line item: "Dictation — New: Type with your voice using built-in dictation," with no further detail published about languages, accuracy or screen-aware replies (raycast.com/ai and raycast.com/pricing, read 15 October 2026). |
| Screen context | "Most context lives on your screen. When an Action Skill runs, Shadow captures the active window — so it sees what you see" (shadow.do, read 15 October 2026). | A named feature, "Screen Awareness": "Provide your agent with context from what's on your screen so it can help without requiring you to explain everything first" (raycast.com/ai, read 15 October 2026). |
| Choice of AI model | Not offered as something you choose — Skills "hit LLM APIs only when you trigger them," with no named provider or model listed on the pages read today (shadow.do, read 15 October 2026). | "Raycast AI provides access to multiple LLMs from state-of-the-art providers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, and more," and you "can connect your existing Claude or ChatGPT subscription, or use your own API keys ... without consuming AI Credits" (raycast.com/ai, read 15 October 2026). |
| Where it runs | "Transcription happens on your Mac. Audio never leaves your device, and your meetings are stored locally." Skills "hit LLM APIs only when you trigger them. Turn it off and everything stays on your machine," and meeting content and Skill outputs are "never used to train AI models" (shadow.do, read 15 October 2026). | "All your data is stored locally on your computer. If you enable Cloud Sync, AI Chats are saved on our servers, encrypted at rest and in transit," and "for complete privacy - use a local model through our integration with Ollama" (raycast.com/ai, Privacy section, read 15 October 2026). |
| Platforms | "Shadow runs on macOS today. Other platforms are on the roadmap," with no minimum macOS version or chip stated on the pages read today; cross- device sync is also "on our roadmap," not shipped (shadow.do, read 15 October 2026). | macOS ("macOS Tahoe and Apple Silicon required"), Windows ("v2.8.0.0, Windows 10+"), and a companion iOS app (raycast.com/ai, raycast.com/windows, raycast.com/ios, read 15 October 2026). |
| Free tier | "Free, forever": "Unlimited Transcription," "Unlimited Audio Recording," "Unlimited Smart Screenshots," plus "2 weeks of Plus, free — no card required" (shadow.do/pricing, read 15 October 2026). | No free AI tier — "we only offer Pro plans that include AI. However, you can choose to turn off AI completely in Settings." The base launcher (clipboard history, window management and so on, without AI) is free (raycast.com/pricing, read 15 October 2026). |
| Paid price | Plus: $8 a month, "Everything in Free, plus unlimited AI features" — unlimited Action Skills, AI Meeting Notes, Meeting Skills and AI Chat (shadow.do/pricing, read 15 October 2026). | Bundled only inside Raycast's own Pro plan, never sold alone: $10 a user a month billed monthly, or $96 a user a year billed annually (higher Plus and Max tiers add more AI credits and top-tier models, at $20/$192 and $50/$480) (raycast.com/pricing, read 15 October 2026). |
The quotes above are dated so you can check them against both sites yourself.
What Memoe does
Hold one key from any app, say what you need, and Moe answers out loud and goes and does it: reads the mail and calendar you've connected, takes meeting notes on your Mac with nothing joining the call, drives some Mac apps itself for a specific task, and touching the trackpad stops it. Before Moe sends anything to another person it shows you exactly what will go out and waits for your click.
What it remembers about you is kept in plain files on your disk that you can read, edit and delete. The thinking comes from your own ChatGPT or Claude plan, an API key, or a model on your Mac — not resold, not marked up. Memoe is a free Mac app, and everything that runs on your Mac is free; Away, from $20 a month, is a cloud computer of your own that keeps going when the Mac is shut, and Away+ is $50 a month. It needs an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 15 or later.
See also: Alter vs NovaVoice and Wispr Flow vs Raycast AI, the other Mac AI-tool pairings.