How to use these prompts
The most valuable part isn't the minutes, it's the actions: who does what by when. Minutes without owners and deadlines are a summary nobody reopens. All the prompts below extract those first, then the rest.
Two cautions. If you paste notes taken in a hurry, the AI may attribute a task to the wrong person: always reread the owners column before sending the minutes. And if you record the audio to have it transcribed, tell those present: recording a conversation without saying so is improper and in some contexts forbidden.
The prompt library
An agenda that doesn't overrun
Prepare the agenda for a meeting on this objective.
For each item indicate: the maximum time in minutes, who introduces it,
and the expected decision (not just "discuss," but what has to be decided).
Put at the top the items that require a decision, at the bottom the
updates. Total within the duration I give you.
Meeting objective, participants and duration:
From raw notes to minutes with actions
Turn these meeting notes into orderly minutes. Output in
three blocks: 1) Decisions made (a plain list); 2) Actions: a table
with columns What / Who / By when; 3) Open points to revisit.
Don't invent owners or deadlines: if an action has no name or
date, write "to be assigned." Terse tone.
Notes:
Follow-up email right afterward
Write the follow-up email to send to the participants after this
meeting. Brief: one line of thanks, the decisions in three points,
each person's actions with the deadline, and the date of the next
appointment if there is one. Subject line included. No long pleasantries.
Notes or minutes of the meeting:
A targeted reminder for whoever didn't deliver
Write a brief, courteous reminder for a person who was supposed to carry out
an action decided in a meeting and hasn't done it yet. Recall the action and
the agreed deadline, ask for an update, offer help if needed.
Collaborative tone, not that of an overseer. Maximum 80 words.
Person, agreed action and deadline:
Questions to prepare for an important meeting
I'm about to go into an important meeting on this topic. Prepare for me
the 6 most useful questions to ask: the ones that bring out the real knots,
not the obvious things. For each, one line on why it's worth asking it.
Include an awkward question that the others probably avoid.
Meeting topic and my objective:
A concrete example
Giulia coordinates a team of five people and loses half an hour every Monday writing the minutes of the weekly meeting. During the meeting she jots down telegraphic notes on her phone: "budget ok — Marco sends quote — site delayed, contact supplier — revisit Thursday."
At the end of the meeting she pastes those lines into the minutes prompt. The AI returns: Decisions ("budget approved"); an Actions table ("Send quote / Marco / Friday"; "Contact site supplier / to be assigned / before Thursday"); Open points ("site delay"). Giulia sees right away that "contact the supplier" has no name: she assigns it herself before saving. Then she pastes the same text into the follow-up prompt and in a minute she has the email ready. Monday's half hour becomes five minutes.
When it does NOT work (and how to fix it)
If it attributes the actions to the wrong person
With telegraphic notes the AI guesses who does what. The remedy is in the prompt itself: the instruction "don't invent owners, write 'to be assigned'" blocks it. What's left to assign you decide, since you were in the room.
If the minutes are too long and nobody reads them
If it returns three pages, you gave too many notes without filtering. Add "maximum one page, cut everything that isn't a decision or an action." The minutes serve to remember the commitments, not to transcribe the conversation word for word.
If the audio transcription is full of errors
Automatic transcriptions get names and technical terms wrong. Before feeding it to the AI, do a quick pass to correct the proper names and the abbreviations: the actions and invitations rest on those. Five minutes of cleanup avoid minutes that assign tasks to a "Marco" who was "Marta."
A tip from someone who actually uses it
Write the notes already thinking of the AI: one line per decision, one per action with the name attached. You don't need to write well, you need to write who-what-when. The more your notes are structured this way, the less the AI has to guess and the less you have to correct. The perfect minutes come from telegraphic but orderly notes, not from nice notes.
Frequently asked questions
Can I have a meeting transcribed and summarized while it's being held?
Yes, with the tools that transcribe in real time, but with two rules. Tell those present you're recording. And remember that the transcription is a draft: names, figures and technical terms should always be verified before turning them into actions with owners.
Do the AI-written minutes have official value?
No, they're an internal working tool. For minutes that carry weight (assemblies, boards, acts with legal value) you need the form and signatures required by your rules. Use the AI for the draft and the speed; the official version is validated by whoever has the authority to do so.
Don't I risk delegating the meeting's decisions to the AI?
The AI decides nothing: it extracts the decisions you made and puts them in order. If the minutes contain a wrong choice, the choice was wrong in the meeting, the model didn't make it. The tool makes the commitments visible, but the responsibility to honor them remains with the people whose name is next to the action.