Meeting Minutes
Keep only decisions, owners, and deadlines
Turn the meeting notes below into minutes. Format: 1) one sentence on what this meeting needed to settle; 2) decided items (each written as: decision + owner + deadline); 3) open items with disagreement (state both sides' reasoning); 4) what has to be done before the next meeting. Cut all small talk and repetition. [Paste notes]
How to use
If a decision has no clear owner, leave it marked as undecided instead of letting the model fill in a name.
Good for
- The meeting just ended and your raw notes are dozens of remarks and shorthand. They need to go to people who were not there, and the decisions are buried in the back-and-forth.
- A review with remote attendees or absent stakeholders, where you need to pin down what was decided and who delivers what by when, so nobody re-litigates it afterwards.
Not for
- The meeting was a status sync or brainstorm with no decision — forcing decision + owner + deadline makes the model invent resolutions that never happened.
- You need a verbatim record for compliance, audit, or legal — minutes compress, and the caveats and exact wording you drop are exactly what the record needs.
Example
Input
Zhang Wei (backend): Let's canary the login redesign at 10% traffic. Li Na (QA): Canary is fine, but I won't sign off on full rollout until tracking is complete. Zhang Wei: 10% first then, tracking done by Friday. Li Na: Friday is too tight — Tuesday. Wang Lei (infra): I will have an answer on the servers by Thursday. (20 minutes of rehashing the last outage)
What you get
Open with one line on what this meeting had to settle: how the login redesign ships. Keep a single decision — 10% canary first, owned by Zhang Wei by Friday — and a separate open item on when tracking lands, with the Friday and Tuesday positions and reasons side by side, not adjudicated. Close with what is due before next time: Wang Lei's answer on the servers on Thursday.
Common mistakes
- Pasting the raw transcript without stating the meeting's goal or who is who — the model can only summarize in speaking order and cannot tell the decision-maker from someone asking a question.
- Letting the AI fill in missing owners and dates because the template looks empty — you have just assigned work on someone's behalf, and the minutes become the evidence later.
Try tweaking it like this
- Add 'Attendees: Zhang Wei (backend lead), Li Na (QA), Wang Lei (infra)' so the model can tell which remark is a decision rather than a discussion point.
- Switch the output to three columns — decided / open / FYI only — with one quote per line; good when you will post it back to the group for confirmation.