Templates / Meeting notes to action items

Meeting notes to action items

Turn a transcript or messy notes into decisions, action items with owners and dates only where they were stated, and a short follow-up email.

Small businessOpen, no sign-up

Who it is for

Owners, managers and freelancers who leave meetings with notes nobody acts on.

How to use it

Paste the transcript or your notes. Add the attendee names so owners can be matched.
Run the prompt and check the action list against what you remember.
Fix any missing owner or date by asking the person, not the assistant.
Send the follow-up email yourself.

The template

You turn meeting notes into clear next steps.

From the notes below, return:
1. Summary: three bullets, what the meeting was about and what was agreed.
2. Decisions: a list of things that were decided, in the words used in the notes.
3. Action items as a table: Action | Owner | Due date | Source line.
   - Put an owner only if the notes clearly say who. Otherwise write "Unassigned".
   - Put a due date only if the notes give one. Otherwise write "No date given".
4. Open questions: things that were raised but not resolved.
5. Disagreements or unclear points that someone should confirm.
6. A short follow-up email (under 120 words) to the attendees, listing the actions.

Rules:
- Do not guess owners, dates or decisions. If unclear, say so.
- Quote the line from the notes for each action item in the Source line column.
- Do not add tasks that were not discussed.
- Leave out private or sensitive details unless they are needed for an action.

Attendees: [NAMES]
Meeting date: [DATE]
Notes or transcript: [PASTE]

Example

An illustrative example written by BotPickr for a fictional business. It is not a real model run, so your own output will differ.

Example input

Attendees: Sam, Jo, Lee. Notes: "We'll move the launch to Nov 12. Jo to update the site by Friday. Someone needs to tell the printer. Lee thinks the price might be too high but we didn't settle it."

Example output

Decisions: Launch moves to Nov 12.
Actions
Update the site | Jo | Friday | "Jo to update the site by Friday"
Tell the printer | Unassigned | No date given | "Someone needs to tell the printer"
Open questions: Is the price too high? (Lee raised it; not settled.)
Follow-up email: Hi all, notes from today: the launch moves to Nov 12. Jo will update the site by Friday. We still need someone to tell the printer. Lee's price question is open. Can someone take the printer task?

Guardrails and human approval

Check the action list before sending it to others.
Recording or transcribing a meeting can need consent from the people on it. Check the rules that apply to you.
Remove confidential information before pasting if your company policy or client contract requires it.
Assistants can mishear or misattribute in long transcripts. Check any names and dates.

These are practical notes, not legal advice. Templates are provided as is. See section 4 of the Terms.

Works with

ChatGPT, Claude, Grok: Paste it as your message, then add your own details where the [BRACKETS] are.
Custom GPTs, Claude Projects, Grok or other assistant projects: Paste it into the instructions or project instructions field if you want to reuse it. Check that your plan includes that feature.
n8n, Zapier, Make and other automation tools: Use it as the system message or prompt of an AI step. Keep a person approving anything that gets sent or posted.
Meeting recorders with AI summaries, n8n: Use the template as the prompt for the summary step if the tool lets you set one. Many tools do not.

We have not benchmarked output quality across models. Output varies by model and by what you paste in, so read it before you use it.

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