meeting-notes-structure

name	meeting-notes-structure
description	Produces meeting notes that capture decisions and action items — not transcription. Attendees, agenda, decisions, action items with owners and deadlines. Use when a user needs notes from a meeting that's about to happen, is happening, or just ended, or wants a template for recurring meetings.

Meeting Notes Structure

A tight, consistent template for notes anyone can read six months later and know what happened.

When to use

• A user is taking notes during or after a meeting.
• They need a template for a recurring meeting (standup, 1-on-1, retro, planning).
• They have a raw transcript / recording and want to extract notes from it.
• They're prepping an agenda for a meeting that hasn't happened yet.

Before you start

Know:

1. Meeting type. Standup, 1-on-1, retro, planning, kickoff, status, decision. Changes structure. See meeting-types.md.
2. Audience for the notes. Attendees only? Wider team? Public customer update? Drives what you include and what you leave out.
3. Sensitivity. Performance, comp, layoffs, legal — different rules (fewer specifics, named owner for follow-up, flagged confidential).

Authoring workflow

1. Before the meeting: write the agenda into the notes template. Attendees, expected outcomes, questions to decide.
2. During the meeting: capture decisions and action items in real time. Full sentences where it matters; fragments are fine for context.
3. After the meeting (within 15 min): clean up, move action items to the top, confirm owners/deadlines, send to attendees.
4. Don't transcribe. Notes are not a recording. Capture decisions and actions, skip the discussion that led there unless it's load-bearing.

The core template

# [Meeting name] — [YYYY-MM-DD]

**Attendees**: [Names, flag missing people]
**Absent**: [Names, if expected but absent]
**Purpose**: [One sentence]

## Action items

| Owner | Task | Due |
|-------|------|-----|
| @alice | Draft the RFC | 2026-05-01 |
| @bob   | Get legal review | 2026-04-29 |

## Decisions

- Decided to ship option B (defer option A to next quarter). Reasoning: cost of A is ~2x, benefit similar.
- Decided to extend the deadline to 2026-05-15 to accommodate legal review.

## Discussion notes

[Only the bits that matter for context. Short.]

## Open questions

- How do we handle migration for existing users? — owner: alice, target date for answer: 2026-04-29.

## Next meeting

2026-04-30, 14:00 UTC. Agenda: review RFC, legal feedback.

Non-negotiable rules

• Action items have an owner and a deadline. No owner = nobody does it. No deadline = it never happens. Both required.
• Use @name for owners. Not "the team", not "we", not "someone". A single person.
• Decisions section is just decisions. Not discussions. "We decided X because Y." If there's no decision, don't fake one.
• Action items go first. Most readers just want to know what they owe. Put it at the top, above the discussion.
• Decisions use past tense. "Decided to ship B." Not "will ship B" (that's an action item) and not "discussed shipping B" (that's nothing).
• Don't transcribe. A paragraph-long summary of discussion defeats the point. Notes ≠ recording.
• Share within 15 minutes. Notes sent two days later get read by nobody.
• Flag missing people. If a decision was made without a key person, flag it: "⚠️ Alice not present; confirm with her before executing."

Output

• For live-note use: fill the template during the meeting, clean up after.
• For transcript-to-notes: extract decisions + action items + open questions into the template structure. Ignore the small talk.
• For prep: fill the top half (attendees, purpose, agenda, open questions); leave action items + decisions blank.

References

• Template — the full copy-paste template, with examples and variants.
• Action items — what makes a good action item, how to write them so they actually get done.
• Meeting types — standups, 1-on-1s, retros, planning, kickoff, status — template variations for each.