For the AI: How to Extract and Save Meeting Notes

⚠️ FIRST: Review the CRITICAL RESPONSE FORMAT section above. Your response MUST follow that exact format.

When a user pastes meeting notes or asks you to extract action items, follow these instructions.

Step 0: Pre-Flight Checklist

Before responding, confirm you will:

• Respond in ONE single message (not multiple)
• Use filename format: YYYY-MM-DD_topic.md (date FIRST)
• Display numbered action items in chat
• Attach the full .md file
• Include the to-do list prompt

Step 1: Setup Check

On first use, ensure the meeting-notes/ folder exists in the workspace:

• If it doesn't exist, create it
• All meeting note files go here

Step 2: Identify the Content Type

Determine what kind of input you received:

• Raw meeting notes (bullets, fragments, messy)
• Transcript (speaker labels, timestamps)
• VTT/SRT subtitle files (video captions with timestamps)
• Otter.ai / Fireflies / Zoom transcript exports
• Email thread (Re:, Fw:, signatures)
• Chat export (usernames, timestamps)
• Mixed/other unstructured text

Supported file formats:

• .md, .txt — Plain text/markdown
• .vtt, .srt — Video caption files (common from Zoom, Teams, etc.)
• Pasted text — Any format

Adapt your extraction based on the format, but output should always be consistent.

Step 3: Extract These Elements

ALWAYS extract:

1. Meeting Title/Topic (for filename)

   • Extract from content if obvious
   • If unclear, ask: "What should I call this meeting?"
   • Use generic if needed: "meeting", "sync", "call"

2. Date

   • Extract from content if mentioned
   • If not mentioned, use today's date
   • Format: YYYY-MM-DD

3. Summary (2-3 sentences max)

   • What was this meeting about?
   • What was the main outcome?

4. Action Items (most important)

   • Format: - [ ] @Owner: Task — Deadline
   • If no owner mentioned: - [ ] @Team: Task
   • If no deadline mentioned: - [ ] @Owner: Task — TBD
   • Be specific about the task
   • Extract ALL action items, even implicit ones

EXTRACT IF PRESENT:

5. Decisions Made

   • What was agreed upon?
   • What choices were finalized?

6. Open Questions

   • What wasn't resolved?
   • What needs more information?

7. Next Steps

   • When's the next meeting?
   • What happens after this?

8. Attendees (if detectable)

   • Who was mentioned?
   • Who spoke?

Step 4: Save the File

⚠️ FILENAME FORMAT IS CRITICAL:

YYYY-MM-DD_topic.md

Examples:

❌ WRONG (never do these):

• anne-call-notes.md — Missing date prefix!
• meeting-notes-2026-02-02.md — Date not first!
• 2026-02-02-anne-call.md — Use underscore after date, not hyphen!
• Anne Call Notes.md — No spaces, no caps!

Validation checklist:

• Starts with YYYY-MM-DD_ (date + underscore)
• All lowercase
• Hyphens for spaces in topic
• No special characters
• Ends with .md

CRITICAL — Encoding & Characters:

• Always use UTF-8 encoding
• Use proper Unicode characters: — (em dash), → (arrow), 📅, ✅, ⚠️, ❓
• Do NOT use ASCII approximations that render as garbled text
• Test: If you see â€" or ðŸ"… in output, encoding is broken

File template:

---
date: YYYY-MM-DD
title: Meeting Title
attendees: [Name1, Name2, Name3]
source: pasted notes | transcript | email | chat
---

# Meeting Title

**Date:** YYYY-MM-DD
**Attendees:** Name1, Name2, Name3

---

## Summary

[2-3 sentence overview]

---

## Action Items

- [ ] **@Owner**: Task description — *Deadline*
- [ ] **@Owner**: Task description — *Deadline*

---

## Decisions

- Decision 1
- Decision 2

---

## Open Questions

- Question 1
- Question 2

---

## Next Steps

- Next meeting: [date/time if known]
- [Other next steps]

---

<details>
<summary>📝 Raw Notes (click to expand)</summary>

[Preserve the original input exactly as pasted]

</details>

After saving, ALWAYS do all three in ONE response:

1. Display condensed summary in chat
2. Attach the full .md file
3. Show to-do list prompt

CRITICAL: All three must happen in a single response. User should never need to ask separately.

Response format (display in chat):

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📋 [MEETING TITLE] — [Date]
Duration: [X min] | Attendees: [Names...]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SUMMARY
[2-3 sentence overview of the meeting]

⚡ CRITICAL ACTION ITEMS ([X] of [Total])
1. [ ] @Owner: Task — Deadline
2. [ ] @Owner: Task — Deadline
3. [ ] @Owner: Task — Deadline
4. [ ] @Owner: Task — Deadline
5. [ ] @Owner: Task — Deadline

✅ KEY DECISIONS
• Decision 1
• Decision 2

📎 Full notes attached: [filename.md]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Add to your to-do list?
• "all" — Add all [X] items
• "1,2,4" — Add specific items
• "none" — Skip

Smart truncation rules:

Prioritize for chat display:

1. Items with explicit deadlines (especially "today", "tomorrow", "ASAP")
2. Items marked critical/urgent in the notes
3. Items with clear owners
4. Remaining items by order of mention

File attachment is mandatory:

• Always attach the full .md file
• File contains EVERYTHING (all action items, decisions, raw notes, etc.)
• Chat display is the highlight reel, file is the complete record

Step 5: To-Do List Management

File location: todo.md in workspace root

To-do file format:

# To-Do List

Last updated: YYYY-MM-DD

---

## ⚠️ Overdue

| # | Task | Owner | Due | Source |
|---|------|-------|-----|--------|
| 3 | Send proposal | @Sarah | Jan 25 | client-call.md |

---

## 📅 Due Today

| # | Task | Owner | Source |
|---|------|-------|--------|
| 5 | Coordinate with agency | @Lisa | product-sync.md |

---

## 📆 This Week

| # | Task | Owner | Due | Source |
|---|------|-------|-----|--------|
| 1 | Share mockups | @Sarah | Fri | product-sync.md |

---

## 📋 No Deadline

| # | Task | Owner | Source |
|---|------|-------|--------|
| 4 | Handle social campaigns | @John | product-sync.md |

---

## ✅ Completed

| # | Task | Owner | Completed |
|---|------|-------|-----------|
| 2 | Schedule meeting | @Sarah | Jan 26 |

Adding items to to-do list:

When user responds to the prompt:

• "all" → Add all extracted items
• "1,3,5" → Add only those numbered items
• "none" → Skip, don't add any

For each added item:

1. Assign next available # (auto-increment)
2. Place in correct section based on deadline
3. Record source meeting file
4. Update "Last updated" date

Confirm after adding:

✅ Added 5 items to todo.md (#12-#16)

#12 @Sarah: Share mockups — Friday
#13 @Sarah: Update timeline — No deadline
#14 @Lisa: Coordinate with agency — Today
#15 @Mike: Call Acme Corp — Tomorrow
#16 @Sarah: Post job listing — EOW

View full list: "show todos"

Handling to-do commands:

Daily check ("todo check"):

📋 TO-DO CHECK — [Today's Date]

⚠️ OVERDUE ([X] items):
#3 @Sarah: Send proposal — was due Jan 25 (3 days ago)
#7 @Mike: Review contract — was due Jan 26 (2 days ago)

📅 DUE TODAY ([X] items):
#5 @Lisa: Coordinate with agency
#9 @John: Send assets

📆 COMING UP ([X] items due this week):
#12 @Sarah: Share mockups — Friday
#15 @Mike: Call Acme — Tomorrow

📋 NO DEADLINE ([X] items):
#4 @John: Handle social campaigns
#8 @Team: Review server costs
→ Consider adding deadlines to these items

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Any updates?
• "done 3,5" — Mark as complete
• "move 3 to Friday" — Update deadline  
• "remove 4" — Delete item

Section organization rules:

When marking complete:

1. Move item from current section to Completed
2. Add completion date
3. Keep the original # for reference
4. Confirm: "✅ Marked #3 complete"

When removing:

1. Delete item entirely
2. Do NOT reuse the # (prevents confusion)
3. Confirm: "🗑️ Removed #5 from to-do list"

Step 6: Handle Display Requests

If user just wants to see the output (not save), show it in their requested format.

If user wants both, save the file AND display the output.

Default behavior: Save the file, offer to-do list prompt, then display summary.

Step 7: Reference Previous Meetings

When user asks about previous meetings:

"What did we decide about X?"

• Search meeting-notes/ for relevant files
• Look in Decisions sections
• Return the decision with source file

"What action items does @Name have?"

• Search all files for @Name in Action Items
• Return list with source files and dates

"Show me last week's meetings"

• List files from date range
• Show title and summary for each

"Find meetings about X"

• Search filenames and content
• Return matching files with relevant excerpts

Search approach:

1. Check filenames first (fast)
2. Search content if needed
3. Return results with file references
4. Offer to show full details

Step 8: Handle Edge Cases

If notes are very short:

• Still extract what you can
• Still save the file
• Note: "Brief meeting, limited details captured"

If no clear topic:

• Ask: "What should I call this meeting?"
• Or use: YYYY-MM-DD_meeting.md

If date is ambiguous:

• Ask: "When was this meeting?"
• Or use today's date with note

If multiple meetings in one paste:

• Ask: "This looks like multiple meetings. Should I separate them?"
• Create separate files if confirmed

If it's not meeting notes:

• Still try to extract actionable items
• Adjust filename: YYYY-MM-DD_notes-topic.md

Step 9: Final Response Format

⚠️ THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP. YOUR ENTIRE RESPONSE MUST BE ONE SINGLE MESSAGE.

Complete response template (copy this structure exactly):

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📋 [MEETING TITLE] — [YYYY-MM-DD]
Duration: [X min] | Attendees: [Names]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SUMMARY
[2-3 sentence overview of the meeting]

⚡ ACTION ITEMS ([X] of [Total])
1. [ ] @Owner: Task — Deadline
2. [ ] @Owner: Task — Deadline
3. [ ] @Owner: Task — Deadline
4. [ ] @Owner: Task — Deadline
5. [ ] @Owner: Task — Deadline

(+[X] more in attached file)

✅ KEY DECISIONS
• Decision 1
• Decision 2

📎 Saved: meeting-notes/YYYY-MM-DD_topic.md

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Add to your to-do list?
• "all" — Add all [X] items
• "1,2,4" — Add specific items
• "none" — Skip

Checklist before sending (ALL must be true):

• Is this ONE message? (not split into multiple)
• Does filename start with YYYY-MM-DD_?
• Are action items NUMBERED (1, 2, 3...)?
• Is the to-do prompt included?
• Is the file attached/saved?

If ANY checkbox is false, FIX IT before responding.

Tone

• ONE response only (never send "Processing..." then "Done" separately)
• Lead with summary and critical items
• Be concise in chat, comprehensive in file
• Always show the to-do list prompt if action items exist