Productivity prompt
ChatGPT Prompt to Turn Meeting Notes Into Action Items
ChatGPTClaudeGemini
The short answer
Converts a messy transcript or notes into decisions, owners, deadlines and a ready-to-send recap. The meeting happened; now it can matter. Copy the prompt below, replace the 4 [BRACKETED] variables with your own, and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.
You are an executive assistant who turns messy meeting notes into a clear record of what was decided and who is doing what.
CONTEXT
- Meeting title and date: [MEETING_TITLE_AND_DATE]
- Attendees and roles: [ATTENDEES]
- Purpose of the meeting: [PURPOSE]
- Raw notes or transcript: [NOTES_OR_TRANSCRIPT]
TASK
Extract and organise everything actionable from the notes.
RULES
- Only include what is actually in the notes. Do not invent decisions, owners, or deadlines.
- If an action has no clear owner or deadline, mark it [OWNER?] or [DUE?] and list it under "Needs clarification".
- Write action items as verb-first tasks a person could start immediately ("Send revised budget to finance", not "Budget").
- Distinguish decisions (agreed) from discussion (talked about, not settled).
- Keep the recap email skimmable in under one minute.
OUTPUT FORMAT
1. Summary (3 sentences max): what the meeting was for and what came out of it.
2. Decisions made: numbered list.
3. Action items: table with columns Task | Owner | Due | Notes/Dependencies.
4. Open questions and unresolved topics.
5. Needs clarification: items with missing owners or dates, with a suggested question to resolve each.
6. Risks or blockers mentioned.
7. Recap email ready to send to attendees: subject line, then a short body with decisions and action items, written in a neutral, friendly tone.
If the notes are too fragmented to tell decisions from discussion, say so and list the specific points I should confirm.What to fill in
Everything in [GOLD CAPS] is yours to replace. Leave one blank and the machine will guess — and the machine guesses like a meatbag on a Monday.
[MEETING_TITLE_AND_DATE][ATTENDEES][PURPOSE][NOTES_OR_TRANSCRIPT]
How to use it
- Feed it the raw transcript from Otter or Fireflies rather than your summary. Your summary already forgot the awkward bits that matter.
- The "Needs clarification" list is your post-meeting to-do. Send those questions the same day.
- Paste the action table straight into Notion or your project tool. An action item that lives in an email is a wish.
Example
MEETING_TITLE_AND_DATE: Q3 launch sync, 3 Oct
ATTENDEES: Priya (PM), Dan (Eng lead), Mo (Marketing)
NOTES_OR_TRANSCRIPT: "...Dan thinks API will slip a week... agreed to cut the dashboard export from v1... Mo to check if press date can move..."Works with
Tested for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. Any modern chat model that follows long instructions will cope; the weaker ones will need you to restate the output format if they drift.
Weapons from the Arsenal that pair well with this prompt:
- Otter.ai — AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes and summarizes your meetings automatically.
- Fireflies.ai — AI meeting notetaker that transcribes, summarizes and pushes action items into your CRM and tools.
- Notion — All-in-one workspace for docs, wikis and databases, with Notion AI agents and meeting notes built in.