From messy meeting notes to clear actions in two minutes

Meetings end, and the notes sit in a doc nobody reads. A week later, people remember different decisions. AI is good at fixing this, as long as you set it up to stick to what was actually said.

Step 1: capture something, anything

You do not need perfect notes. Any of these work:

• A transcript from your video call tool.
• Rough bullet points you typed during the meeting.
• A voice memo you recorded straight after, transcribed.

The rougher the input, the more important the next step is.

Step 2: ask for structure, not a summary

"Summarise this meeting" gets you a paragraph that sounds nice and says little. Ask for a fixed structure instead:

1. Decisions made, one line each.
2. Actions, each with an owner and a due date if one was mentioned.
3. Open questions nobody answered.
4. Anything that sounded like a decision but was not confirmed.

That last point catches the "I think we agreed" moments that cause trouble later. The meeting notes to actions prompt uses this exact structure.

Step 3: keep it grounded

Add one line to the prompt: "Only include what is in the notes. If an owner or date was not mentioned, write 'not stated'." This stops the model from inventing a tidy owner for every task. It is a simple form of grounding, and it matters more here than almost anywhere, because people will act on the result.

Step 4: send the follow-up

Paste the structured notes into the meeting follow-up email prompt. It writes a short email that leads with decisions and actions, so people can reply with corrections while the meeting is still fresh.

Make it automatic with a skill

If you run this workflow every week, add the meeting notes skill. It holds the structure and the grounding rules, so you can paste notes and say "write this up" without any prompt at all.

Bonus: better meetings next time

The same approach works in reverse. Before the meeting, the agenda builder turns a goal into an agenda with a time box and a decision for each item. Meetings with a clear agenda produce notes that are much easier to turn into actions.

The whole workflow

1. Capture notes or a transcript.
2. Ask for decisions, actions, open questions and unconfirmed points.
3. Tell it to say "not stated" instead of guessing.
4. Turn the result into a follow-up email.

Two minutes after the meeting, everyone knows what was decided and who is doing what.