AI workflow guide

Turn meeting notes into action items with an AI assistant

Use this workflow when your meeting notes are messy but you need a clean list of decisions, owners, deadlines, risks, and a follow-up email. The AI assistant drafts structure; you still verify names, dates, and commitments before sending anything.

Fast version

Paste raw notes into a private working document.
Remove sensitive details that the AI assistant does not need.
Ask for decisions, action items, open questions, and risks.
Review every owner, deadline, and promise against the original notes.
Generate a short follow-up email and edit it manually.

1. Prepare the notes before using AI

Do not paste a transcript blindly. First, delete private information, customer secrets, credentials, medical details, legal advice, or anything your team would not want processed by an external assistant. Keep the context needed to understand the work: meeting topic, attendees, rough notes, dates, and unresolved questions.

2. Use a structured prompt

Copy this prompt and replace the bracketed parts with your own notes.

You are helping me organize meeting notes.

Goal:
Turn the notes into a practical follow-up summary.

Please return:
1. Decisions made
2. Action items with owner, deadline, and next step
3. Open questions
4. Risks or blockers
5. A short follow-up email draft

Rules:
- If the owner is unclear, write "Owner unclear".
- If the deadline is unclear, write "No deadline stated".
- Do not invent commitments.
- Keep the language plain and concise.

Meeting context:
[Paste meeting topic, attendees, and date]

Raw notes:
[Paste cleaned notes here]

3. Check the output before trusting it

AI summaries are useful, but meeting actions are accountability records. Use this review checklist before sending the result:

Does every action item appear in the original notes?
Are owner names spelled correctly?
Are deadlines real dates, or did the assistant infer them?
Are decisions separated from suggestions?
Are open questions clearly marked instead of treated as tasks?
Is anything sensitive included that should be removed?

4. Ask for a tighter version

If the output is too long, ask for a second pass. This keeps the workflow practical for busy teams.

Make the follow-up summary shorter.
Keep:
- decisions
- action items
- unresolved questions
Remove:
- background explanation
- repeated details
- vague motivational wording

5. Follow-up email template

Use this as a final human-edited email, not as a message to send without review.

Subject: Follow-up from [meeting name]

Hi team,

Here is the cleaned-up summary from today's meeting.

Decisions:
- [Decision 1]
- [Decision 2]

Action items:
- [Owner] - [Task] - [Deadline]
- [Owner] - [Task] - [Deadline]

Open questions:
- [Question 1]
- [Question 2]

Please reply if I missed anything or assigned an item incorrectly.

Thanks,
[Your name]

When this workflow is not enough

Do not use this workflow as the final record for legal, medical, HR, compliance, or contract decisions without the right human review. For sensitive meetings, use your organization's approved tools and retention policy.