Prompts for summarizing meetings
A summary prompt works best when it asks for the parts people actually need afterwards: what was decided, who owns what, and by when. Without that, the AI retells the meeting in order and the useful parts get buried.
Before and after
Rough request
summarize this meeting
Becomes
Summarize the meeting notes below for people who were not there. List the decisions made, then action items with an owner and a due date where one was mentioned, then open questions. Do not add anything that is not in the notes. Use short bullet points, no more than 200 words.
Illustrative example; your results will vary.
Why this prompt works
- It states the reader (people who were not there), so the summary is self-contained.
- It asks for decisions, owners and open questions rather than a chronological retelling.
- 'Do not add anything that is not in the notes' reduces made-up details.
Tips
- Paste the raw notes or transcript and say which parts are noise.
- Ask for owners and dates explicitly. They are the first thing people look for.
- Tell the AI to mark anything unclear instead of guessing.
- Reuse the same prompt every week so summaries have a consistent shape.
Want to know what each part of a prompt does? Read the six-part structure or compare prompt frameworks.
Turn your own rough idea into a prompt
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