Summarize a meeting transcript

The summary prompt that produces decisions and owners instead of a shorter transcript.

When to use it

Turning a transcript into something actionable, where the value is in the decisions rather than the discussion.

What it prevents

A shorter transcript. Summaries drift into recounting the conversation. Asking for decisions, questions, and owners — and for “owner not stated” instead of a guess — turns it into a document someone can act on.

The prompt

Summarize the meeting transcript below.

### Output format
Markdown with three sections: Decisions, Open questions, Actions. Each item is one bullet under 20 words.

### Requirements
- Every action must name an owner. If the transcript does not say who, write "owner not stated" rather than guessing.
- Leave out discussion that did not lead to a decision or an action.
- Do not include anything that is not in the transcript.

### Transcript
"""
Priya: we should move the launch to April.
Sam: agreed. I'll tell marketing.
Priya: does anyone know if the contract allows it?
"""

Why each part is there

Every section of that prompt exists because a specific failure happens without it. These are the checks it passes, and what each one is protecting you from:

• States a concrete task — why this matters
• Avoids vague language — why this matters
• Specifies an output format — why this matters
• Avoids dangling references — why this matters
• Separates data from instructions — why this matters
• Avoids over-aggressive phrasing — why this matters

How to adapt this one

Point it at your transcript and keep the three buckets — Decisions, Open questions, Actions — because those are what someone acts on, and the discussion around them is what you are paying to throw away. Keep “name an owner or write “owner not stated””; a summary that invents who agreed to do something is worse than one that admits the transcript never said.

The mistake this prompt avoids

Getting a shorter transcript instead of a summary. Ask a model to “summarise the meeting” and it recounts the conversation in order, faithfully and uselessly. The value is not compression; it is extraction — the three decisions and two actions buried in forty minutes of discussion. Ask for those explicitly and let everything else fall away.

A variation

Running a recurring meeting? Add “flag any action from the previous summary that was not mentioned” and paste last week’s output into the context. The point of standing notes is catching what quietly dropped, and a model comparing two transcripts finds the abandoned action item faster than the person who owned it will admit to it.

Check your version

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