Messy notes in, decisions out: the meeting workflow (Day 10 of the 30-Day Challenge)

The task

Turn raw meeting notes — fragments, typos, half-sentences — into a structured record: agenda covered, decisions made, risks raised, owned next steps. This is the Day 10 build from the 30-Day AI-Native Challenge, fully worked.

Before AI

Notes go into a doc nobody reopens. Two weeks later, nobody remembers whether the pricing change was decided or just discussed, and the action items live in four people's heads, unowned.

What you'll need

• Any chat model (free tiers fine)
• Real notes from your last meeting — the messier the better; that's the point
• Your Prompt Library doc

The workflow

1. Paste the mess with this prompt:

Below are my raw notes from a meeting. Turn them into a structured record:

## Decisions
Only things actually DECIDED. If it was merely discussed, it does not go here.

## Open questions
Discussed but unresolved. Note who seemed to own each, if the notes say.

## Risks raised
Anything flagged as a concern, with who raised it.

## Next steps
Table: action | owner | due date. If owner or date is missing from my notes,
write [UNASSIGNED] or [NO DATE] — do not invent them.

## What I might have missed
Anything in my notes that's ambiguous or seems important but incomplete. Ask me
up to 3 clarifying questions.

Rules: use only what's in my notes. Never upgrade a discussion into a decision.

My notes:
[paste]

The two integrity rules do the heavy lifting: no invented owners/dates and no upgrading discussions into decisions — the two ways AI meeting summaries quietly lie.

2. Answer its clarifying questions. This is 60 seconds and doubles the accuracy — you're filling gaps while the meeting is fresh instead of two weeks later.

3. Verify the Decisions section against your memory before it goes anywhere. That section is the one people will treat as truth.

4. Send the Next-steps table to attendees, or paste it into your task tool. [UNASSIGNED] rows are your follow-up list — every one is a dropped ball you just caught.

5. Save the prompt to your library as "Meeting → record." From now on it's paste-notes-and-go.

Verify it worked

Show the output to someone else who was in the meeting. If they dispute anything in Decisions, the workflow surfaced a real misalignment — that's the system working, not failing. Fix the record now, not in two weeks.

Troubleshooting

• It's summarizing instead of structuring? Your notes might be too thin. The workflow structures what exists; it can't reconstruct a meeting from four words. Take slightly fuller notes and let it do the shaping.
• Decisions section has things that weren't decided? Tighten your notes' language ("DECIDED:" prefix while note-taking helps) or add examples of decided-vs-discussed to the prompt.
• Recurring meeting? Add last week's Next-steps table to the prompt and ask it to mark each item done / carried / dropped.

Reality check

This doesn't replace listening. It replaces the 20 minutes of tidying afterward — and, more importantly, it forces the decided-vs-discussed distinction that most teams blur.

Data & security

Meeting notes routinely contain personnel and strategy details. Consumer tier: sanitize names. Cleared enterprise tier: go ahead. Your Day 6 playbook governs.

Going further

Day 14 packages this prompt with your email bank and templates into the AI Chief of Staff Pack. And if your meetings produce documents, Day 11's Claude 101 documents section covers grounded, cited analysis of them.

Your takeaway

A reusable prompt that turns every meeting into a record someone could act on — with owners, dates, and an honest line between decided and discussed.