You just left a 45-minute meeting.
Now you open a blank doc and try to reconstruct what happened. Who said what. Who's doing what by when. And then you need to email everyone a summary that doesn't sound like you weren't paying attention.
Here's what that actually looks like:
Write up notes from memory — 20 min
Figure out who owes what — 10 min
Draft a follow-up email — 10 min
Create tasks in Asana/Jira/Monday — 10 min
Schedule the next meeting — 5 min
55 minutes of admin. For a 45-minute meeting.
If you're a manager with 6 meetings a day, that's not admin — that's your entire job. You're being paid to type up what other people said.
Microsoft found that knowledge workers sit in 11.3 hours of meetings per week. Flowtrace calculated 103 hours per year in meetings that didn't need to happen. And nobody's counting the admin afterwards.
Here's the fix.
✂️ The Prompt
Open Claude or ChatGPT. Paste your meeting transcript — from Otter, Granola, Zoom AI Companion, Teams transcript, or even your own rough notes typed during the call.
Then paste this:
You are a senior executive assistant who has sat in thousands of meetings. Analyse this meeting transcript and produce exactly this:
1. SUMMARY (3-4 sentences max. What was discussed, what was decided, what's unresolved. No filler.)
2. KEY DECISIONS (Bullet list. Each one states the decision AND who made the call.)
3. ACTION ITEMS
| Owner | Task | Deadline | Priority |
|-------|------|----------|----------|
| Name from transcript | Specific task | Date if mentioned, "TBD" if not | High/Med/Low |
4. OPEN QUESTIONS (Things that were raised but not resolved. Include who raised them.)
5. FOLLOW-UP EMAIL (Write a professional but warm email to all attendees. Reference specific things discussed — not vague pleasantries. Include the action items table. Propose a next meeting time based on what was discussed. Sign off as [YOUR NAME].)
Rules:
Use the actual names from the transcript. Never write "Person A" or "[Name]."
If a deadline wasn't mentioned, write "TBD — needs follow-up" not a made-up date.
The summary should be factual. No "productive discussion" or "great synergy."
The follow-up email should sound like a competent human, not an AI. No "I hope this email finds you well."
If someone rambled or went off-topic, don't include that in the summary. Only capture what matters.
Here is the transcript:
[PASTE YOUR TRANSCRIPT HERE]That's it.
Paste your transcript below the prompt. Hit enter. You'll get structured notes, a decision log, an action items table with owners and deadlines, and a ready-to-send follow-up email.
90 seconds instead of 55 minutes.
Copy the follow-up email into Gmail. Skim it, tweak one line if you want, send. Done.
Why this works (and why "summarise this meeting" doesn't)
Most people's first instinct is to paste a transcript and ask "summarise this."
That gives you three paragraphs of watered-down text that's barely more useful than the transcript itself. You still need to extract the action items. You still need to write the email.
The trick is structured output. When you give AI a specific format — summary, decisions, action items TABLE, follow-up EMAIL — it stops being a summariser and becomes an executive assistant.
The action items table is the killer feature. Names, tasks, deadlines, priority. In 10 seconds instead of 10 minutes. And because it's a table, not a paragraph, nothing gets buried.
Try it right now
You have a meeting today. Or you had one this morning.
Grab the transcript (most video tools auto-generate one now)
Paste the prompt above
Paste the transcript below it
Hit enter
Then ask yourself: is 90 seconds better than 55 minutes?
If yes, you'll want what's below.
⚡ The Full Kit
The prompt above handles one meeting. The full Meeting Notes Machine kit handles every meeting, automatically, forever.
📦 What's in the kit:
1. The 4-Prompt Chain
Not one prompt — four, each building on the last:
Prompt 1: The Extractor — Transcript → raw structured data (attendees, topics, decisions, actions, questions)
Prompt 2: The Formatter — Raw data → clean meeting notes in your team's standard format
Prompt 3: The Deadline Setter — Action items → smart deadline suggestions based on priority and context ("discussed as urgent" = 2 days, "follow up next quarter" = 30 days)
Prompt 4: The Follow-Up Drafter — Everything above → personalised email that references the actual discussion, not generic fluff
2. Google Doc Template
Pre-formatted meeting notes document that matches the output structure. Paste once, formatting done. Consistent format across every meeting your team runs.
3. Zapier/Make Blueprint
Import this file and the pipeline builds itself:
Trigger: New transcript in Otter/Granola
Step 1: Send to Claude via API with Prompt Chain
Step 2: Create Gmail draft with follow-up email
Step 3: Create tasks in Asana/Jira from action items
One-click import. 10 minutes to set up. Runs forever.
4. Team Adoption SOP
The 1-page doc you hand your team. "Here's how we do meeting notes now." Covers: how to record, how to run the chain, where notes go, who creates tasks. Written so a non-technical person can follow it.
5. Edge Case Prompts
Not every meeting is the same:
Brainstorms — No action items? This variant captures ideas + themes instead
1:1s — Private notes format, career development tracking, sensitive topics handling
All-hands — Company update format, Q&A extraction, announcement summary
Client calls — External-facing notes vs internal notes (different level of detail)
Interviews — Candidate scorecard format with structured feedback
⏱️ Time to implement: 15 minutes (manual) or 10 minutes (with Zapier blueprint)
💰 Time saved: 5-10 hours per week for someone with 4+ meetings/day
Next week (Tuesday)
I stopped writing Friday status updates. My manager didn't notice.
One Less Thing is a twice-weekly newsletter that gives you one copy-paste automation kit per issue. Subscribe for free to get the starter prompt every Tuesday and Friday. Upgrade for full kits with prompt chains, templates, blueprints, and SOPs.