Meeting notes in practice

A meeting notes template that people actually read

A short meeting notes template built on decisions, action items with owners and dates, and open questions, with copyable Markdown and a worked example.

By the Notey team at AInject · · 6 min read

In short

A useful meeting notes template has four parts: a line saying which meeting this was, the decisions made, the action items with an owner and a date, and the questions still open. That is the whole template.

Most notes that nobody reads fail because they record what was said rather than what changed.

This guide gives the template in copyable Markdown, explains why each section is there and what to leave out, and shows a filled-in example. The rest of the guides in this section go deeper on each part.

The template

Copy this into whatever you write notes in. The headings are the point; the order is the order people read in.

# <Meeting name> — <date>

**Who:** <names>
**Purpose:** <one line: why this meeting happened>

## Decisions

- <What was decided, in one sentence.> (<who decided>)

## Action items

- [ ] <Owner> — <verb> <deliverable> — by <date>

## Open questions

- <Question> — <who will find out, if anyone>

## Notes

- <Only what someone will need later and cannot get from the above.>

Why each section is there

The header

Name, date, who was there, and one line of purpose. It seems like ceremony, but it is what lets someone find the right notes three months later, and it tells a reader who was not there whether they need to keep reading. The purpose line also gives you a test: if the notes do not answer it, the meeting did not do what it set out to do, and that is worth knowing.

Decisions

A decision is something that was settled and will not be discussed again unless something changes. Write each one as a single sentence a stranger could understand: "Harbour 2.4 ships on Thursday without the export feature," not "agreed on release." Add who made it when that matters, which is most of the time.

This section comes first because it is what most readers are looking for. People who missed the meeting want to know what changed. People who were there want to check they heard the same thing.

If nothing was decided, write "No decisions." It is useful information, and it stops anyone later assuming a decision was made and not written down. For decisions that need to survive longer than one set of notes, a decision log keeps them in one place.

Action items

Each action item needs four things: an owner, a verb, a deliverable and a date. "Tom — send Northwind the revised timeline — by Friday" can be done and checked. "Follow up on timeline" cannot.

Only write down what somebody actually committed to. If the meeting talked about a task and nobody took it, that belongs under open questions, not here with an invented owner. Writing action items that get done covers this in detail.

Open questions

Things the meeting raised and did not settle. Writing them down stops them disappearing, and it is where the next meeting's agenda comes from. If someone agreed to find out the answer, that is an action item; if nobody did, leave it as a question and say so.

Notes

The last section and the one to keep shortest. Context that someone will need and cannot get from the sections above: a number someone quoted, a constraint the client mentioned, the reason an option was rejected. Not a summary of the discussion. If you find yourself writing "then Ana said… then Marc said…", you are writing minutes, which are a different document with a different job. Meeting minutes vs meeting notes explains when you need those instead.

A worked example

This is a fictional meeting between an invented team working on a product called Harbour.

# Harbour 2.4 release check — 18 September 2026

**Who:** Ana Ruiz, Tom Becker, Priya Shah, Marc Dubois
**Purpose:** Decide whether 2.4 ships this week.

## Decisions

- 2.4 ships on Thursday. The CSV export moves to 2.5. (Ana)
- The release note will say export is coming, without a date. (Priya)

## Action items

- [ ] Tom — review the two open pull requests — by Wednesday 12:00
- [ ] Priya — draft the release note and send it to Ana — by Wednesday
- [ ] Marc — tell Northwind the export feature has moved — by Thursday

## Open questions

- Does Northwind's contract promise export in this release? Nobody knew; Marc will check with sales.

## Notes

- Export slipped because the date format bug affects every locale, not only German.

That fits on one screen, and someone who missed the meeting knows everything they need to act. The open question has an owner in its note but is not written as an action item with a made-up date, because Marc did not commit to one.

What to leave out

  • Who said what, in order. That is a transcript's job, or minutes'. Notes that retell the conversation bury the decisions.
  • Your own opinions, unless they are labelled as yours. People reading notes assume they are a neutral record.
  • Anything sensitive that does not need to be written. Notes get forwarded. If a comment about a person or a salary does not affect any action, leave it out.
  • Unassigned tasks dressed up as action items. "We should look at onboarding" with no owner is an open question.

Getting the notes out

Notes do their job once they reach the people who need to act. Send them the same day, to everyone who attended and anyone who owns an action item but was not there. For meetings with people outside your organisation, the notes often become a follow-up email after the meeting: the decisions and action items in the body, and a question about anything still open.

Put internal notes wherever the work already lives, such as the project page, the ticket or the team's shared folder, rather than in a separate notes app nobody else opens.

If you record the meeting

A recording or transcript does not replace notes; it changes what they are for. With a transcript to go back to, notes no longer need to capture detail, so they can be even shorter: the decisions, the actions and the questions, with the transcript as the source when someone asks "what exactly did the client say?". How to take meeting notes while you are in the meeting covers what to write live when a transcript exists.

Notey records a meeting on your Mac and transcribes it there. If you ask it to, it writes a summary with action items from the transcript, and when nobody committed to anything it says so rather than inventing items. Everything it writes is labelled as AI-generated, and you can edit it before it goes anywhere. Whatever writes the first draft, check it against what was actually said before you send it.

Tell people when a meeting is being recorded. A recorder that runs on your own computer is not visible to the other participants, so saying it at the start is your job.

More on meeting notes

The template above works for most meetings. Some kinds of meeting need their own shape:

Frequently asked questions

What should meeting notes include?

At minimum, what was decided, who agreed to do what by when, and which questions are still open. A line of context at the top (the meeting, the date, who was there) makes them findable later. Everything else is optional.

How long should meeting notes be?

Short enough that someone who missed the meeting reads all of it. For an hour-long meeting that is usually well under a page. If the notes are longer than that, they have probably turned into a transcript.

Should meeting notes be written during or after the meeting?

Decisions and commitments during, because that is when you can check them with the room. The tidy version straight after, while you still remember what the shorthand meant.

What is the difference between meeting notes and minutes?

Minutes are a formal, ordered record of discussion and decisions, often approved at the next meeting. Notes are for the people who have to act. See meeting minutes vs meeting notes.

Where should I keep meeting notes?

Wherever the people who act on them already look, such as the project's wiki page, the ticket, or a shared document. Notes that live somewhere nobody opens do not get read.