Claude meeting notes: three ways to use Claude with your meetings

The options at a glance

Every option starts with a transcript. Zoom, Teams and Google Meet can produce one on some plans if the host turns it on. Or record with an app that transcribes for you. Either way, make sure everyone agreed to being recorded: recording laws vary, and some places require everyone's consent.

1. Copy and paste a transcript into Claude

The simplest way. Open Claude, paste the transcript (or attach it as a text file), and say exactly what you want. Specific prompts get much better notes than "summarize this". Wrapping the transcript in tags helps Claude tell your instructions apart from the meeting.

Here is the transcript of a meeting. Write meeting notes with:
1. A two-sentence summary at the top.
2. Decisions, as a bulleted list.
3. Action items as a table: task, owner, due date. If no owner or date
   was said, write "not stated" rather than guessing.
4. Open questions.
Use the speakers' names as they appear in the transcript. Keep it under
one page. Do not invent anything that is not in the transcript.

<transcript>
[paste transcript here]
</transcript>

Then keep going in the same chat:

Using the meeting transcript above, draft a short follow-up email from me
to the client. Thank them, restate the three things we agreed, list what
we'll send and when, and ask them to confirm the start date. Friendly,
plain language, under 150 words.

More prompts worth trying

• "Turn this into formal minutes using this template: [paste a minutes template]."
• "What did the client say they were worried about? Quote the exact lines."
• "Which questions were asked but never answered?"
• "Write a three-line recap I can post in Slack."
• "Were there any commitments I made? List them with the time they were said."

Transcripts with speaker names work much better than a wall of text, because Claude can tell who promised what. Always check names, numbers and owners before you send anything Claude writes.

2. Keep meetings in a Claude Project

Claude Projects keep files and instructions together, so every chat in the project can use them. That's ideal for a recurring meeting, a client or a long-running project: upload each transcript to the project's knowledge, and set instructions once so you don't repeat your preferred format.

1. In Claude, create a new project, for example "Weekly team meeting".
2. Add project instructions (example below), plus any glossary of names and terms.
3. After each meeting, upload the transcript as a file named with the date.
4. Ask questions across meetings: "What has changed in the launch plan over the last four meetings?"

You help me with notes from my weekly team meetings. Every transcript in
this project is one meeting, named by date. When I ask for notes, use
this format: Summary (2 sentences), Decisions, Action items (task, owner,
due date), Open questions. Our team: Dana (design), Marcus (engineering),
Priya (product), Tom (marketing). Spell product names exactly as in the
glossary file.

The catch: you still have to export and upload every transcript, and how much a project can hold depends on your Claude plan.

3. Connect Claude to your meetings with Hark's MCP server

Hark is a free desktop app for Windows, Mac and Linux that records meetings on your own computer, transcribes them there (English only) and works out who spoke by voice. While it's open, Hark also runs a local MCP server, which lets Claude Desktop or Claude Code, using your own Claude subscription, work with your meetings directly. This part of Hark is free.

What Claude can do through Hark

• List and search your meetings and transcripts, including who was in each one
• Read full transcripts with speaker names and times
• Look up the people Hark knows (job title, company, notes)
• Read the live transcript of a meeting in progress
• Start, stop and mute recording
• Search email you've chosen to download into Hark (Gmail, Outlook/Office 365 or IMAP), which stays on your computer

How to connect

1. Download Hark and create a free account.
2. Open the Connect Claude page in Hark. It sets up Claude Desktop for you, or shows the command for Claude Code, which looks like this:

   claude mcp add --transport http --scope user hark http://127.0.0.1:7891/mcp

3. Restart Claude Desktop (or start a new Claude Code session) and keep Hark open.
4. Ask Claude about your meetings.

Example prompts

• "What did we decide about the launch date in this week's meetings with Dana?"
• "Find every meeting where pricing came up in the last month and summarize how the discussion changed."
• "Write notes for my last meeting in the "action items first" style and save them to the meeting."
• "List every action item assigned to me in meetings since Monday."
• "Who was in the call this morning, and what did each person ask for?"
• "Start recording. ... What has been said so far about the budget?"

Privacy, plainly: your recordings and transcripts stay on your computer. When you ask Claude something, Claude reads the transcript text it needs through Hark, and that text goes to Anthropic under your Claude account's terms, like anything else you share with Claude. The audio never leaves your computer.

4. Or let Hark write the notes with Claude

If you'd rather not prompt at all, Hark's built-in AI features use Claude too. After each meeting, Claude writes AI meeting notes in the style you choose (or your own style file), gives the meeting a title, and can proofread the transcript using your list of names and terms; every change can be undone. During a meeting, you can turn on live notes and ask questions about what's been said.

These need a Hark subscription ($12/month as of October 2026, cancel any time) or the 2-day preview that new accounts get. They send the transcript text, not the audio, to Claude through External Software's service, and you don't need your own Claude account. Recording, transcription, speaker recognition and the MCP server stay free.

One limitation to know: on a Mac, Hark records the microphone only, so for online calls on a Mac the other side is captured only if it plays through your speakers. On Windows and Linux it records both your mic and the computer's audio.

Tips for better Claude meeting notes

• Name the speakers. "Speaker 2 will send it" is useless. In Hark, name each voice once and future meetings are labeled automatically.
• Give Claude a format. Paste one of our meeting notes templates or the meeting summary template and ask Claude to fill it in.
• Tell it not to guess. "If an owner or date wasn't said, write 'not stated'" prevents made-up details.
• Add context. Who the meeting was with and what it was for helps Claude judge what matters.
• Review before sending. Claude is accurate with a good transcript, but you're the one who was there.

Recording classes instead of meetings? See recording and transcribing lectures.