Meeting summary template

Meeting summary email template

This is the one to send after most meetings. The TL;DR is for people who read only the first line, which is most people. Everything else is in the order readers care about: what changed, then what they need to do.

Subject: Summary - [Meeting name], [Date]

Hi all,

Here's a quick summary of today's [meeting name].

TL;DR
[One or two sentences: the most important outcome.]

DECISIONS
- [Decision]
- [Decision]

NEXT STEPS
- [Owner]: [task] by [date]
- [Owner]: [task] by [date]

KEY DISCUSSION POINTS
- [Point, with the number or reason that matters]
- [Point]

OPEN QUESTIONS
- [Question] ([who is finding out])

Attendees: [Names]
Next meeting: [Date / time]
Recording / full notes: [Link or location]

Let me know by [day] if I missed anything.
[Your name]

Short version for Slack or Teams chat

For quick calls, five lines in the team channel are enough.

[Meeting name] - [Date]
Outcome: [one sentence]
Decided: [one line]
Next: [owner] - [task] - [date]; [owner] - [task] - [date]
Open: [question or "none"]

Example meeting summary

Here's the email template filled in after a 45-minute vendor review. Someone who missed the meeting knows the outcome from the first two lines and their task from the next steps.

Subject: Summary - Q3 vendor review, Oct 14

Hi all,

Here's a quick summary of today's vendor review.

TL;DR
We're staying with our current shipping vendor for Q3 after they agreed
to a 6% rate cut, and we'll re-bid in January.

DECISIONS
- Renew the shipping contract for one quarter at the new rate.
- Start a formal re-bid in January with at least three vendors.

NEXT STEPS
- Sam: send the signed renewal to procurement by Oct 17
- Aisha: draft the January bid requirements by Nov 30
- Leo: pull last year's late-delivery numbers by Oct 21

KEY DISCUSSION POINTS
- Late deliveries improved in August but are still above target.
- Two other vendors quoted lower rates, but neither covers Alaska.

OPEN QUESTIONS
- Can we add a late-delivery penalty to the renewal? (Sam is asking)

Attendees: Sam, Aisha, Leo, Grace
Next meeting: Nov 4, 2 PM

Let me know by Friday if I missed anything.
Grace

How to write a good meeting summary

1. Write the TL;DR last. Fill in decisions and next steps first, then ask "what's the one thing everyone must know?"
2. Lead with outcomes, not chronology. Nobody needs to know what was discussed first.
3. Give every next step a name and a date. Put the owner first so people can scan for their own name.
4. Include the number or reason behind a decision. "6% rate cut" is more useful than "better terms".
5. Ask for corrections with a deadline. "Let me know by Friday" turns silence into agreement.
6. Send it the same day. A summary sent a week later is a history lesson.

Writing summaries from a transcript

The fastest way to write an accurate summary is from a recording, so you can check who agreed to what instead of relying on memory. Recording laws vary by place, so tell people and get their consent before you record.

Hark is a free desktop app for Windows, Mac and Linux that records your meetings on your own computer and transcribes them there (English only), labeling who spoke by voice. No bot joins the call. It records your microphone and, on Windows and Linux, your computer's audio, so it works with any meeting app; on a Mac it records the microphone only.

With a Hark subscription ($12/month, as of October 2026) or the 2-day preview for new accounts, Claude (Anthropic) writes AI meeting notes from the transcript in a choice of styles, and you can add your own style file, for example one that follows the summary template above. To do this, Hark sends the transcript text (not the audio) to Claude. Always read the draft and fix anything it got wrong before you send it.

Prefer to use your own Claude account? See using Claude for meeting notes. For other formats, see our meeting notes templates and the meeting minutes template.