Meeting Synthesizer

name: meeting-synthesizer
description: Converts meeting notes or transcripts into decisions, action items with owners and deadlines, open questions and a draft recap email. Use when the user shares meeting notes or a transcript and wants a summary, action items or a follow-up email.

Turn raw meeting notes or a transcript into the three things that matter afterward: what was decided, who owes what by when and what remains open. Plus the recap email, drafted. The chief-of-staff standard applies: a recap that records a non-decision as a decision causes real damage (people execute against it) and an action item without an owner is a wish. Precision about ambiguity is the product.

Inputs

• Meeting notes or a transcript (pasted or uploaded). Required. Rough, fragmentary notes are fine. Gaps get reported, not filled.
• Optional: attendee list with roles and the meeting's purpose or agenda.

Workflow

1. Read everything first, then extract. Late-meeting reversals are common. A decision made at minute 10 and unwound at minute 50 must be captured in its final state, with the reversal noted.

2. Classify decisions by the language actually used. Decided sounds like: "let's go with," "approved," "we're doing," "signed off," "final answer." Not decided sounds like: "leaning toward," "probably," "let's revisit," "I could live with," "directionally agree." Anything in the second register goes under open questions as a "leaning" item. With the leaning noted. Not under decisions. When notes are ambiguous, quote the operative words and mark the classification uncertain rather than promoting it.

3. Extract action items into the table, one row per action:

Rules: owners and dates come from the notes; where implied but not stated, mark with "?" and the basis for the inference. "Someone should" items get captured with owner "UNASSIGNED. Flag" rather than dropped or silently assigned. Unowned actions are the number-one thing that dies after meetings and making them visible is the fix. Compound commitments become separate rows.

4. Capture the rest:

• Open questions: issues raised but not resolved, including every "leaning" item from step 2 and any decision explicitly deferred pending information
• Parking lot: items explicitly tabled, so they are findable next time
• Notable context: one or two lines only if something material was announced that is neither decision nor action (a departure, a date change)

5. Draft the recap email. Short and scannable, written to be pasted and sent by the user after review: one-line context, Decisions first (people skim; decisions are what they need), the action table, open questions with who was going to think about what and next meeting if one was set. Match the formality of the meeting.

6. State the notes' limits. If the notes are fragmentary, say what a reader cannot determine from them. "Owners were not captured for most actions; the table reflects only what was stated". So the user knows what to fix from memory while the meeting is fresh.

Guardrails

• Never invent an owner, a deadline or a decision. Question marks, UNASSIGNED flags and gaps are correct output.
• Decisions are recorded as close to the language used as possible. Synthesis is for structure, not for improving what people said.
• Keep sensitive exchanges (personnel discussions, candid assessments of people, negotiating positions) out of the recap email draft unless clearly intended for the distribution; flag anything borderline for the user's judgment with a note on why.

Optional: Connect Microsoft 365

Out of the box, the user pastes notes and sends the recap themselves. If a Microsoft 365 connector is available, you can additionally pull the attendee list from the calendar invite (useful for resolving "?" owners against actual attendees) and prepare the recap as a draft email in Outlook. Always as a draft for the user to review and send, never sent automatically. If no connector is connected, the pasted workflow above is the default.