Meeting Summary Template
A reusable meeting notes template with variables for raw notes, attendees, meeting goal, decisions, action items, risks, open questions, and next meeting date.
Overview
Raw meeting notes are almost never directly useful. They capture what was said, not what was decided or who owns what next. This template transforms messy notes into a structured summary that answers the three questions every meeting participant actually needs after it ends: what was decided, who is doing what by when, and what is still unresolved. The raw notes variable accepts whatever format you have — full transcript, bullet points, or fragments.
Workflow
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Capture raw notes in any format
Paste whatever you have into the rawNotes variable — a transcript, a voice memo transcript, or bullet-point fragments. The template works with messy input.
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Fill in the template variables
Open in Prompt Template Builder. Variables: meetingGoal, meetingDate, nextMeetingDate, attendees, rawNotes, decisions, actionItems, risks, openQuestions.
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Pre-fill what you already know
If you already know the key decisions and action items, put them in the decisions and actionItems variables. The AI will reconcile these with the raw notes and fill in anything you missed.
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Review action items for owner and due date
The most common gap in meeting summaries: action items without owners or dates. Review the output and fill in any '[TBD]' entries before sending.
Why This Works
- Separating raw notes from known decisions allows the AI to reconcile what was discussed with what was actually resolved — the most error-prone part of manual summarization
- Requiring action items as [Owner] — [Task] — [Due date] prevents the most common failure mode: action items that no one owns
- The open questions section captures unresolved items explicitly rather than letting them disappear into 'we'll discuss next time'
- Specifying the output sections forces completeness — a meeting with no risks listed is a meeting where risks went unacknowledged, not one where none existed
Best for
- Meetings with decisions and action items that need to be tracked after the call
- Teams where the meeting notes taker is also a participant and cannot write full sentences in real time
- Organizations that want a consistent summary format across all meeting types
- Async teams that share meeting summaries with people who were not on the call
Not for
- Verbatim meeting transcripts where every word needs to be preserved
- Highly sensitive meetings — always review and redact before sharing AI-generated summaries
- Meetings with no decisions or action items — if nothing was decided, the summary will reflect that
Use cases
- Converting messy call notes or transcript exports into a shareable summary
- Building a post-meeting email using structured sections as the outline
- Creating a running decisions log from recurring team meeting summaries
- Generating a standardized summary format across a team or organization