Separates what was decided from what was merely discussed, attributes owners, and flags the open questions everyone left the room assuming someone else would answer.
Turn this raw meeting record into a decision document for {{READER}}. MEETING PURPOSE: {{PURPOSE}} TRANSCRIPT: {{TRANSCRIPT}} Produce exactly these sections: **Decisions made.** Only things actually settled. For each: the decision in one sentence, who owns it, and the date or trigger it takes effect. If a decision was implied but never stated out loud, put it here and mark it `[implied — confirm]`. **Explicitly not decided.** Things discussed at length that reached no conclusion. This section is the most valuable one; do not let it be empty if the transcript shows unresolved threads. **Open questions.** Each phrased as a question, with a named owner and the decision it blocks. If no owner was named, write `owner: unassigned` — do not guess. **Context worth keeping.** The two or three pieces of reasoning a future reader would need to understand why, not what. Discard the rest. **Disagreements.** Where people did not converge, state both positions fairly and who held each. Do not smooth this over into consensus. Rules: - Never invent an owner, a date, or a decision. Absence is information. - Quote directly when the exact wording carries the nuance. - Cut small talk, tangents, and anything already in a shared doc. - Total length: under one screen for the first three sections.
Tools for this prompt
Where the input below comes from. The ones marked needed change the output a lot — fallbacks for each are further down.
This prompt is only as good as what you feed it. Web search covers anything public — these are the inputs it can't reach.
The transcript. Get consent before recording — this prompt notes that too.
Don't have it: Ask the user to paste notes or a transcript; never reconstruct a meeting from memory.
The same, with a free tier.
Don't have it: Ask the user to paste notes or a transcript instead.
Where the decision doc should end up so it's findable in three months.
Don't have it: Output the document as markdown for the user to file wherever they keep things.
Only tools that web search cannot replace are listed. Anything public — reviews, job ads, papers, salary data — an agent can already fetch, so it is not listed here. No paid placements or affiliate links; if that changes, this line will say so.
A prompt is a skill with the serial numbers filed off. Install it once and your agent reaches for it on its own.
Paste this into ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or whatever you use:
Install the turn-a-transcript-into-a-decision-doc skill globally from https://promptsbuddy.com/prompts/turn-a-transcript-into-a-decision-doc/skill.md.claude/skills/turn-a-transcript-into-a-decision-doc/SKILL.md
---
name: turn-a-transcript-into-a-decision-doc
description: "Separates what was decided from what was merely discussed, attributes owners, and flags the open questions everyone left the room assuming someone else would answer. Use when the user asks for help with product tasks like meetings, documentation, product."
license: CC-BY-4.0
metadata:
source: https://promptsbuddy.com/prompts/turn-a-transcript-into-a-decision-doc
author: "Lena Fischer"
version: "1.2"
---
# Turn a messy meeting transcript into a decision doc
Separates what was decided from what was merely discussed, attributes owners, and flags the open questions everyone left the room assuming someone else would answer.
## Inputs to collect first
Ask the user for anything below that they have not already given you. Do not
invent values for these.
- `TRANSCRIPT` — Raw transcript, notes, or a chat log. Speaker labels help but aren't required. (e.g. Paste the transcript.)
- `PURPOSE` — What the meeting was for. (e.g. Deciding whether to rebuild search or buy a vendor.)
- `READER` — Who reads the doc — this changes what's worth including. (e.g. Two engineers who weren't there, plus our VP who will skim it.)
## Tools this works with
Do not require any of these. If one is unavailable, use the stated fallback and
say which input is missing rather than inventing it.
- **Granola** (needed) — The transcript. Get consent before recording — this prompt notes that too.
- Without it: Ask the user to paste notes or a transcript; never reconstruct a meeting from memory.
- https://www.granola.ai/
- **Otter.ai** — The same, with a free tier.
- Without it: Ask the user to paste notes or a transcript instead.
- https://otter.ai/
- **Notion** — Where the decision doc should end up so it's findable in three months. If its MCP server is connected, fetch this yourself.
- Without it: Output the document as markdown for the user to file wherever they keep things.
- https://www.notion.com/
## Instructions
Turn this raw meeting record into a decision document for {{READER}}.
MEETING PURPOSE: {{PURPOSE}}
TRANSCRIPT:
{{TRANSCRIPT}}
Produce exactly these sections:
**Decisions made.** Only things actually settled. For each: the decision in one
sentence, who owns it, and the date or trigger it takes effect. If a decision was
implied but never stated out loud, put it here and mark it `[implied — confirm]`.
**Explicitly not decided.** Things discussed at length that reached no
conclusion. This section is the most valuable one; do not let it be empty if the
transcript shows unresolved threads.
**Open questions.** Each phrased as a question, with a named owner and the
decision it blocks. If no owner was named, write `owner: unassigned` — do not guess.
**Context worth keeping.** The two or three pieces of reasoning a future reader
would need to understand why, not what. Discard the rest.
**Disagreements.** Where people did not converge, state both positions fairly and
who held each. Do not smooth this over into consensus.
Rules:
- Never invent an owner, a date, or a decision. Absence is information.
- Quote directly when the exact wording carries the nuance.
- Cut small talk, tangents, and anything already in a shared doc.
- Total length: under one screen for the first three sections.
## Notes from people who use this
- 'Explicitly not decided' is the section that stops the same meeting happening twice.
- Send the draft into the meeting channel within an hour. Corrections arrive while memory is fresh.
- For recurring meetings, keep the output format identical — the diff between weeks becomes the real status report.
---
Turn a messy meeting transcript into a decision doc · by Lena Fischer · v1.2
From PromptsBuddy — https://promptsbuddy.com/prompts/turn-a-transcript-into-a-decision-doc
Licensed CC BY 4.0.
Every prompt is also available at /prompts/turn-a-transcript-into-a-decision-doc/skill.md — see all install options.
AI meeting summaries are confident. That's the problem. They flatten a meeting where nothing was resolved into a tidy list of takeaways, and three weeks later two teams are building different things, both citing the same summary.
Splitting decided from not decided — and forbidding invented owners — turns the summary from a comforting artefact into an honest one.
Models are trained toward agreeableness and will quietly average two opposing views into a compromise nobody stated. The explicit disagreements section exists to stop that. If your transcripts routinely produce an empty one, check whether the model is smoothing or your meetings are genuinely uncontested.
Hands the model a plan and asks it to write the post-mortem for a failure that hasn't happened yet. Surfaces the risks your team is too invested to name out loud.
Rony