Connect SpeakPen to ChatGPT in Five Minutes and Stop Pasting Transcripts
You recorded four ideas on the way home. Two of them are good. Tonight you'll open ChatGPT to work on one, and you already know the routine: find the note, copy the transcript, paste it in, type "here's some context", and repeat for the next one. You'll do it for one note. The other three will wait, and waiting is where voice notes go to die.
The fix isn't a better copy button. It's letting ChatGPT read your notes itself.
As of today SpeakPen runs a remote MCP server at https://speakpen.app/mcp. ChatGPT can connect to it as a custom plugin, sign in to your SpeakPen account with OAuth, and from then on look up your voice notes on its own when you ask. We set this up end to end in ChatGPT on the web on October 7, 2026. This post is the exact click path.
What you're actually connecting
Before the steps, the shape of the thing, because it decides what you can ask:
- SpeakPen is where capture happens. You talk into your phone (iOS, Android or the web app), and a minute later the note has a title, a summary, a category and a full transcript.
-
ChatGPT gets three read-only tools on top of those notes:
- Recent notes: your latest notes, newest first, up to 50 at a time, optionally between two dates.
- Search: keyword search across titles, summaries and transcripts, up to 10 matches.
- Read a note: one note in full, with title, summary, transcript, category, date and length.
That's all of it. ChatGPT can read. It can't create, edit or delete a note, and it never receives your audio; the server simply doesn't return it.
Step 1: Turn on developer mode in ChatGPT
Custom MCP servers live behind ChatGPT's developer mode.
- Open ChatGPT on the web and go to Settings → Security and login.
- Turn on Developer mode. ChatGPT labels it high risk and explains why: it lets you add connectors that OpenAI hasn't reviewed, and some of those could change or delete data. SpeakPen's tools are read-only, but the warning is generic and it's fair. Read it.
If you don't see the toggle at all, your plan or your workspace admin doesn't allow it. That's a ChatGPT setting, not something SpeakPen can switch on for you.
Step 2: Add SpeakPen as a plugin
- Go to Plugins (in Settings, or at chatgpt.com/plugins) and press +.
- The New plugin form asks for:
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Icon (optional) | A 256×256 PNG under 10 KB, if you want one |
| Name | SpeakPen |
| Description (optional) | My SpeakPen voice notes (read-only) |
| Connection |
Server URL: https://speakpen.app/mcp
|
| Authentication | OAuth |
| Advanced OAuth settings | Leave alone. ChatGPT discovers SpeakPen's sign-in and token endpoints from the URL. |
- Tick "I understand and want to continue" and press Create.
Step 3: Sign in and allow
ChatGPT sends you to speakpen.app. Sign in (Google works) and press Allow on the screen that says "ChatGPT wants to read your SpeakPen notes". It spells out the limit: titles, summaries and transcripts, read-only. You land back on chatgpt.com.
Behind the scenes ChatGPT registered itself as a client called "ChatGPT", traded the sign-in for an access token, and listed the three tools. You'll see it in SpeakPen under Settings → Connections → AI assistants, with the date it connected and when it was last used.
Step 4: Ask it something real
Open a new chat, press + next to the message box and make sure SpeakPen is selected. Then start with the obvious:
What did I record in SpeakPen this week?
ChatGPT calls the recent-notes tool with a date range and lists what it found. From there, ask for something you'd never do by hand:
Go through my SpeakPen notes from the last two weeks. Group them by topic, and for each group tell me which idea I keep coming back to.
Search my SpeakPen notes for anything about pricing, read the matching ones in full, and tell me where I contradicted myself.
Mentioning "SpeakPen" in the prompt helps ChatGPT decide to use the tools instead of answering from memory.
What it won't do (so you're not surprised)
- It won't save anything back. If ChatGPT turns ten notes into an outline, the outline lives in your ChatGPT chat. Copy it wherever you keep finished work.
- It can't hear tone. It reads the transcript and summary, not the audio.
- It only sees finished notes. A note still being transcribed shows up a few seconds later.
- It's rate limited to 60 tool calls per minute per account. You won't hit that in normal use, but a prompt like "read all 300 notes one by one" will be slowed down.
- Your plan still counts recordings. The connection is free for every SpeakPen account. Recording isn't unlimited: Free is 3 notes a month of up to 5 minutes each, and Pro is $9.9/month for 60 notes of up to 20 minutes each.
Disconnecting
In SpeakPen, go to Settings → Connections → AI assistants and press Disconnect next to ChatGPT. The access is revoked on the server immediately; ChatGPT's next request is refused. You can also remove the plugin in ChatGPT, but disconnecting on the SpeakPen side is the one that actually cuts access.
If you already sync to Obsidian
Nothing changes there. The SpeakPen Sync plugin keeps putting every note into your vault as Markdown. ChatGPT reads the same notes from SpeakPen directly, so it works whether or not your laptop is open and whether or not you use Obsidian at all.
Do it now
Open ChatGPT on the web, follow the four steps above, and ask: "What did I record in SpeakPen this week?" If you don't have notes yet, record two on your next walk first.
Full setup for ChatGPT and every other client (Claude, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor): https://speakpen.app/connect
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