Get real action items out of a meeting transcript, not a summary nobody reads
Force every decision to have an owner and every owner to have a deadline, or flag that it doesn't.
- Use it for
- Anyone who runs or attends meetings that produce decisions nobody follows up on.
The default "summarize this meeting" prompt produces a recap: what was discussed, roughly in order. Nobody reads recaps twice, and they don't change what happens next, because a recap doesn't force the thing meetings are usually bad at — actually assigning ownership out loud. A decision that ends with "someone should look into that" evaporates by the next meeting, and everyone privately assumed it was someone else.
This prompt refuses to let that happen quietly. It separates decisions from open questions, and for anything that sounds like an action item without an owner, it says so explicitly instead of inventing one — which is exactly the gap that needs to be visible, not smoothed over.
When not to use this
Needs an actual transcript or detailed notes — a vague "we talked about the roadmap" summary has nothing for this to extract. For a meeting that was pure discussion with no decisions expected, a real recap is the right output; this prompt will just tell you that's what happened.
Fill in
Here's the transcript or my notes from a meeting about {{topic}}:
{{transcript}}
Don't summarize the discussion. Extract:
1. **Decisions made** — each as a single sentence stating what was
decided, not what was discussed.
2. **Action items** — each with an owner and a deadline, exactly as
stated in the meeting. If either is missing, write "no owner
assigned" or "no deadline set" instead of inferring one — I need to
know where the gap is, not have it papered over.
3. **Open questions** — things raised but not resolved, so they don't
silently disappear.
4. **Anything that sounded like a decision but wasn't** — someone
proposed something and the room moved on without an explicit yes,
which reads as agreement later but wasn't one.
Keep it to what's actually in the transcript. If the meeting was mostly
discussion with few real decisions, say that plainly instead of
manufacturing action items to fill out the format.Why it works
The "no owner assigned" instruction is the load-bearing part. A model asked to produce action items will, by default, quietly assign the most plausible owner to keep the list looking complete — which recreates exactly the ambiguity that let the task evaporate in the first place. Forcing the gap to stay visible is what makes the output something you can act on: send it back to the room and ask who's taking it, rather than assuming it's handled.
Separating "decisions" from "sounded like a decision but wasn't" catches the specific failure mode where a meeting ends with everyone having a different private understanding of what was agreed. Naming it explicitly is cheap insurance against the next meeting starting with "wait, I thought we decided..."
Common mistakes
- ×Pasting a vague summary of the meeting instead of the actual transcript or detailed notes — there's nothing here to extract from a summary that's already lost the specifics.
- ×Letting the output quietly fill in "no owner assigned" gaps with your own guess before sending it back to the team. The gap is the point; close it out loud, not silently.
- ×Using this for a purely exploratory meeting and being annoyed there are few action items. Sometimes that's the honest answer.
Follow-ups
- Draft the follow-up message to the room, asking specifically who's taking the unassigned items.
- Which of these action items depends on another one finishing first?
Did this work?
Every item in the output names a person and a deadline, or explicitly flags that the meeting didn't actually assign one — not a task list that quietly assumes someone will pick it up.
Tested on claude-opus-5. Evidence status is draft; it moves to battle-tested only on recorded runs, never by hand.