Meeting notes actions

Meeting Notes → Actions

Takes the raw material of a meeting — a transcript, a wall of notes, a pasted chat — and returns exactly four things in a locked template: decisions, action items (owner + due date), open questions, and a 5-line summary. The standard: every action item traces to something actually said, every gap (missing owner, no date) is marked UNASSIGNED/NO DATE instead of invented.

When to Use

• "Turn this transcript into action items", "what were the decisions", "process my meeting notes".
• After any recorded call, standup, or workshop where a file or paste exists.
• Not for: deciding whether the meeting should exist (use calendar-concierge) or rolling actions into a weekly log (use weekly-review).

Quick Reference

Action	Command / Call
Read the source	read_file the transcript/notes path (or use pasted text)
Size check	wc -l "notes.txt" / wc -w "notes.txt"
Find commitments	`grep -inE "i('
Find decisions	`grep -inE "decid
Resolve dates	date -v+3d "+%Y-%m-%d" (macOS) / date -d "+3 days" +%F (Linux)
Save output	Write to <source-name>-actions.md next to the source (new file — overwrites nothing)

Procedure

1. Precheck — confirm the source exists and is readable (wc -w it). No file and no pasted text? Ask for one; never generate a summary of a meeting you haven't seen. Ask for the meeting date if it isn't in the file (needed to resolve "by Friday").
2. First pass: decisions — read fully; grep for decision language as a safety net. A decision is a resolved choice ("we're going with monthly pricing"), not a topic discussed. If it was debated but not closed, it's an open question.
3. Second pass: actions — extract every commitment. Each needs owner + task + due date. Owner unnamed → UNASSIGNED. No date stated → NO DATE. Relative dates ("by Friday") → resolve to ISO dates with date, anchored to the meeting date, and keep the original phrase in parentheses.
4. Third pass: open questions — unresolved threads, "let's take that offline", explicit parking-lot items.
5. Summarize — exactly 5 lines: (1) purpose/context, (2) headline outcome, (3) second key point, (4) main tension or risk, (5) what happens next.
6. Deliver — output the locked template below. Do not add, remove, or reorder sections. Offer to save as <source-name>-actions.md; write only as a new file, never overwriting the source.

Output Template

Locked — sections, order, and headings must not change:

# {Meeting title} — {YYYY-MM-DD}

## Decisions
- D1: {decision} (context: {one clause})

## Action Items
| # | Owner | Action | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | {Name or UNASSIGNED} | {verb-first task} | {YYYY-MM-DD ("by Friday") or NO DATE} |

## Open Questions
- Q1: {question} (raised by {name}, if known)

## Summary
1. {purpose/context}
2. {headline outcome}
3. {second key point}
4. {main tension or risk}
5. {what happens next}

Empty section? Keep the heading and write None recorded.

Pitfalls

• Inventing owners or due dates to make the table look complete — the worst failure: someone gets chased for a task they never took. UNASSIGNED and NO DATE are correct outputs; flag them in your closing line as the meeting's follow-up debt.
• Discussion mistaken for decision — "we could try X" is not "we decided X." Test: would every attendee agree it was settled? If not, it's an open question.
• Relative dates anchored to today instead of the meeting date — a Monday transcript processed Thursday makes "by Wednesday" already wrong. Always anchor date math to the meeting date; if unknown, keep only the verbatim phrase and mark NO DATE (relative: "by Wednesday").
• Transcript too long / auto-captions garbled — process in chunks and merge; for garbled names use Speaker A/B consistently rather than guessing real names. Note the quality caveat above the summary.
• Summary sprawls past 5 lines — the lock is the feature. Exactly five numbered lines; trim commentary, not content.

Verification

• Output matches the locked template exactly — 4 sections, this order, table columns intact
• Every action item is traceable to a line in the source (spot-check 2–3 against the transcript)
• No invented owners or dates; gaps are marked UNASSIGNED / NO DATE
• Summary is exactly 5 lines
• Source file untouched; any saved output is a new -actions.md file