Meeting Notes

Meeting Notes

When to use

Use this when you have a raw transcript, chat log, or rough scribble from a meeting and need the three things that matter afterwards: what was decided, who does what by when, and what is still open.

Not for: verbatim minutes required for legal or governance records (those must capture everything, not a distillation); real-time note-taking during the meeting; or a transcript so fragmentary that no decision or owner can be identified - flag that rather than inventing structure. Do not use it to editorialize on who performed well.

Method

1. Read the whole transcript once before writing anything, so you know how debates resolved before you summarize them.
2. Extract decisions. Decision point: record something as a decision only if someone actually agreed to it in the text; proposals that got no agreement go under Open Questions, not Decisions.
3. Extract action items: task, owner, date. Decision point: if no one was assigned, write "owner: UNASSIGNED" loudly rather than guessing a name; if no date, "by: not set".
4. Attribute carefully. Never put words in a named person's mouth; when the speaker is unclear, write "someone raised".
5. Keep disagreement visible. If someone objected and was overruled, note it in one line - that context matters a month later.
6. Write a two-line summary at the top for people who were not there. If attendees was provided, sanity-check every owner against that list.

Example

Input (raw): "ok so pricing... Sam thinks $29 is too low, Ana wants to test both. fine we'll A/B it. Sam will set up the test this week. also the churn dashboard is still broken, nobody knows why, Jo will look maybe"

Output: Summary: Agreed to A/B test $29 vs current pricing rather than settle the debate now. Churn dashboard breakage remains undiagnosed.

Decisions

1. Run an A/B price test instead of picking a price now (Ana proposed, Sam agreed; Sam had argued $29 is too low).

Action items

• Set up the pricing A/B test - owner: Sam, by: this week
• Investigate broken churn dashboard - owner: Jo (tentative), by: not set

Open questions

• What is actually breaking the churn dashboard?

Pitfalls

• Promoting proposals to decisions. Recording something as decided when the room only discussed it.
• Owner-less actions. Listing a task with no owner, so nobody picks it up - mark UNASSIGNED instead of leaving it blank or guessing.
• Play-by-play. Reproducing the discussion turn by turn instead of one line per thread; the deliverable is decisions and actions.
• Erasing dissent. Dropping the objection that got overruled removes the context needed if the decision is revisited.

Output format

**Summary:** <two lines for someone who missed it>

**Decisions**
1. <decision> (<who proposed / who agreed>)

**Action items**
- [ ] <task> - owner: <name | UNASSIGNED>, by: <date | not set>

**Open questions**
- <unresolved item or ungreed proposal>