Day 23: From meeting notes to actions-and more
You've got that meeting transcript in your inbox, now what? Here's what.
Welcome to Day 23 of 30 Days of AI.
Today we’re talking about something I think all of us have probably experienced: you go to a meeting, you take notes, and then after the meeting is done, somebody has to turn those into action items and agendas for the next thing.
Maybe the notes are terrible, and you have to ask someone if this is right? It goes round and round. Or you’re a consultant talking with a potential client and may be doing a discovery call or some other thing. Nowadays, a lot of our meetings are virtual and we get a transcript. But there’s still the same problem
Well, what now? Who’s going to take these notes and send out the decisions and action item?
Thankfully, this is another place where AI is really well suited to help you out. That’s what we’re going to do today, I’m going to show you how to go from a transcript of a meeting and turn it into a:
Post meeting email with action items
Draft agenda for the next meeting
Proposal for a client (for the fellow consultants in the room)
Going from a transcript to a follow up email
I have to assume you have a transcript of a meeting. If you have handwritten notes, you might need to take some extra steps to scan them and extract the text (btw this never works with my handwriting), but let’s just say you have a transcript from Teams, Gemini, Otter, Granola, etc. What do you do next?
Let’s go over the high-level steps first, then I’ll dive in with the details and example prompts:
Ingest the transcript and give you a summary and attendees. This is just so you know it knows what’s what.
Make a list of action items (what, by whom, by when, why).
Make a list of decisions made, decisions deferred, and where you need more information.
Give it a template for how you want everything formatted and have it generate a full report. This is a critical check in step to make sure things look right before you email it off to people.
If you have a different template for post-meeting emails, have that generated now too.
Create a draft agenda for the next meeting (optional, but a good step even if it’s just “What should the next meeting cover…”)
For consultants who are taking transcripts and turning them into proposals, the steps are similar but have a different angle to them. The steps for steps 2 and 3 are essentially pulling out what they are looking for, where they are coming from, and what themes/topics keep coming up.
An important tip I got from James Rowe of Insightful Innovation for doing this kind of work, was asking to cite the parts of the transcript where things came from (with timestamps and who said it). This gives you a cross-reference to double check against. No sense in having a hallucinated action item!
Let’s walk through all these steps in detail (with example prompts). Although this isn’t rocket science, I still like to be in at least “thinking mode.” so the AI reads things in a little more detail and more slowly. Yes, making sure it thinks about things.
Disclosure: I had Gemini help create the prompts based on me dictating ideas and starter prompts to it. Clearly it can make way better prompts than I can!
Step 1: Ingest and summarize
While all the note takers I’ve used or received summaries from include a summary, I think it’s a good idea to make sure your whole transcript has been ingested and understood properly. You’re going to do all these steps in one chat session (saving parts as you go), so everything stays in context. Unless you had a marathon meeting, you shouldn’t max out your context window, but this is a good way to find out.
Prompt:
---
author: Tris Hussey
copyright: © 2026 Tris Hussey
website: https://www.trishussey.com
date_created: 2026-01-29
version: 1.0
---
**Role:** You are a high-level Executive Assistant and Business Analyst.
**Task:** Analyze the provided meeting transcript to extract strategic insights for a follow-up email and formal proposal.
**Requirements:**
1. **Executive Summary:** Provide a concise, two-paragraph overview. Paragraph 1 should cover the meeting's primary objective. Paragraph 2 should summarize the final sentiment and major outcomes.
2. **Attendee Directory:** List all participants and their roles (if identifiable).
3. **Key Discussion Points:** Use a bulleted list to categorize main topics. For each point:
1. State the topic.
2. Identify the primary speaker(s) driving the point.
3. Provide a **"Context Quote"** or specific timestamp/reference from the transcript to ground the point in reality.
4. **Action Items & Owners:** List any specific tasks mentioned and who is responsible for them.
**Formatting:** Deliver this in clean, professional Markdown using headers (`##`), bold text for names, and bullet points.
**Instruction:** Once the analysis is complete, stop and wait for my next instruction.Step 2: Action Items
Now let’s look at action items. Here’s a prompt to use to pull out action items. It’s important that you have this formatted as a Markdown table—that’s in the prompt—so that you identify the task to be done, who’s doing it, when they have to do it by, and if there’s any related information or tasks. (Sometimes one task relies on another.):
---
author: Tris Hussey
copyright: © 2026 Tris Hussey
website: https://www.trishussey.com
date_created: 2026-01-29
version: 1.0
---
### The Action Item Extraction Prompt
**Role:** You are a meticulous Project Manager. Your task is to analyze the provided meeting transcript to identify and organize all commitments made during the discussion.
**Task:** Scan the transcript for every **explicit** action item (directly assigned) and **implicit** action item (tasks that were implied but not formally assigned).
**Requirements:**
1. **Data Capture:** For every item, identify the task, the responsible party, the timeframe, and any relevant context (e.g., dependencies on other teams or missing information).
1. **Handling Gaps:** \* If no owner is mentioned, list as "Unassigned."
2. If no deadline is mentioned, list as "TBD."
2. **Format:** Output the results in a clean Markdown table.
**Table Structure:**
| To-Do Item | By Whom | By Whom | Notes |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| \[Detailed task name] | \[Person/Team] | \[Deadline/Urgency] | \[Context/Dependencies] |
**Instruction:** Generate the table based on the transcript and stop. Do not add conversational filler.Step 3: Loose ends & decisions
Next: decisions, follow-ups, and more information. I know a lot of these seem overlapping with action items and In some ways they might be, but it’s better to be thorough and cover the bases in different ways to make sure you get everything. Sometimes attacking the problem from a couple of different angles is how you get the whole thing—both for AIs and people! Here’s the prompt, it does combine action items from above as well for a big picture look:
---
author: Tris Hussey
copyright: © 2026 Tris Hussey
website: https://www.trishussey.com
date_created: 2026-01-29
version: 1.0
---
### The "Strategic Alignment" Prompt
**Role:** You are a Project Manager and Strategic Consultant.
**Task:** Review the transcript to identify concrete commitments, final decisions, and unresolved gaps.
**Requirements:**
1. **Action Item Table:** Create a Markdown table with the following columns:
- **Action Item:** A clear, verb-led description of the task.
- **Owner:** Who is responsible? (Note "Unassigned" if not stated).
- **Deadline:** When is it due? (Note "TBD" if not stated).
- **Context/Notes:** Any specific details, dependencies, or links to other teams mentioned.
2. **Decisions Made:** Provide a bulleted list of all firm "Yes" or "No" decisions reached during the call.
3. **Decisions Deferred:** List topics where a decision was postponed, including *why* it was delayed (e.g., waiting for more data, needs executive approval).
4. **The "Loose Ends" (Gap Analysis):** Identify any missing information, unanswered questions, or technical unknowns that were mentioned but not resolved. What needs to happen to push the action items forward?
**Tone:** Professional, objective, and highly organized.
**Instruction:** Present this in Markdown and wait for my next instruction.Step 4: Pulling it all together
Now that we have all the components together, it’s time to do something with it. I’ve broken this prompt up into two parts: Full report and email. I think it’s worth the effort to have both these documents as separate things. You can put the full report into your project management tool or a project folder and still have a nice concise email to send to people:
---
author: Tris Hussey
copyright: © 2026 Tris Hussey
website: https://www.trishussey.com
date_created: 2026-01-29
version: 1.0
---
### The "Deliverables" Prompt
This prompt takes all the analysis from the previous steps and packages it into two distinct formats.
**Role:** You are a Professional Communications Specialist.
**Task:** Using all the data extracted so far (summary, attendees, action items, decisions, and gaps), generate two distinct documents:
**Part 1: The Formal Meeting Report**
* **Purpose:** A comprehensive document to be saved as a PDF or shared as a project record.
* **Content:** Include a professional title, date, the executive summary, the full decision log, the action item table, and the "unresolved gaps" section.
* **Formatting:** Use clean, formal Markdown with clear section headers (`##`).
**Part 2: The Strategic Follow-Up Email**
* **Purpose:** A high-level, "human" email to send to the group.
* **Tone:** Warm, proactive, and professional.
* **Requirements:**
* Open with a "thank you" and a brief positive sentiment about the meeting.
* Bullet point the **top 3 most important** takeaways or milestones.
* Explicitly mention: *"I have attached/included a detailed Meeting Outcome Report below for your records."*
* **The "Call to Action":** Ask one specific question regarding the "Loose Ends" we identified to keep the momentum moving.
* Use placeholders like `[Name]` or `[Company]` where appropriate.
**Instruction:** Please provide both the Report and the Email draft now.Bonus prompts and a consultant proposal-maker prompt for premium subscribers only below…
