An automatic meeting minutes template that files itself
A template tells you what to write down. It has never once written anything down for you, or put the finished page anywhere useful. This is what changes when the template fills itself in and then knows where it belongs.
Most meeting minutes templates are the same six sections: attendees, agenda, discussion, decisions, action items, next meeting. Useful as a checklist, useless as automation, because filling it in is still the whole job. You still listen, still type, still remember to open the document in the first place. The template only tells you the shape of the work, not how to skip it.
What the automatic version fills in
| Template field | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Attendees | Read off the transcript or the calendar invite, not typed from memory. |
| Discussion | Compressed to what changed, not a chronological retelling — see automatic meeting minutes that file themselves as project notes for why a full write-up is the wrong target. |
| Decisions | Pulled out explicitly, each one dated, matching the shape in the decision log template. |
| Action items | Split by owner — a commitment someone else made is filed as theirs, not folded into your list. Detailed in meeting transcript to action items. |
| Next meeting | Only added if one was actually agreed to; the template does not invent a follow-up that wasn't discussed. |
The field the old template never had
Filed under. That is the one column six-section templates never carried, because a template lives in a folder called "Meeting Minutes" and doesn't know or care which client, deal, or project the meeting was about. The automatic version's whole point is that field: it reads the transcript, works out which project this belongs to, and the minutes land there instead of in a growing pile of same-shaped documents nobody re-opens.
The test a template can't pass. Open your last ten filled-in minutes templates. How many can you find again without searching by date? A template that fills itself in and still lives in one long list has only solved half the problem.
What you still have to do
Confirm anything the system flagged as uncertain — a decision phrased ambiguously, an action item with no clear owner — and decide whether a drafted follow-up actually gets sent. The template used to be the whole task; now it is a two-minute review of what already got filled in and filed.
Start from a system, not a blank template
The book builds the project files a meeting can file itself into, in plain text, in about an hour.
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