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PARTLY

As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly write and send meeting minutes.

This still needs a person who signs their name to it.

Can you do it?

5 minutesto a draft.

30 minutesto something you’d act on.

Cost, all in£0

Skill neededchat-fluent

Who has to check ita colleague

What the alternative costsA purpose-built meeting notetaker such as Sembly writes minutes and tracks decisions and tasks.

If this goes wrong: the minutes record an agreement or action that nobody accepted, and the error spreads when you send them as the official record.

What to actually do

  1. Hand it to a person

    The route this page recommends

    A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

  2. Use a tool built for this

    Second choice

  3. Do it yourself

    The distant third

    A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

    How to actually do it

    1. Open the meeting transcript, recording notes or handwritten notes, and confirm that everyone whose voice or personal information is included was permitted to be recorded and processed.
    2. Gather the meeting title, date, attendee list, apologies, agenda, decisions, actions, owners, deadlines and next meeting details from your calendar and meeting documents.
    3. Paste the source material and the known meeting details into the prompt, keeping unrelated personal or confidential information out of the chat unless your workplace permits that tool.
    4. Ask the AI to produce draft minutes and its verification list, then save the draft in your normal team document location.
    5. Compare every decision, action owner and deadline in the draft with the transcript or notes, and replace [CHECK] items with confirmed wording or remove them.
    6. Ask the chair or another attendee to confirm disputed or ambiguous points, then make the agreed corrections in the minutes.
    7. Paste the final minutes into the approved email or meeting system, check the recipient list and attachments, and send them yourself.

    Prompt

    Write draft minutes from the meeting material below. Use only facts stated in the material and mark anything uncertain as [CHECK]. Do not invent decisions, attendees, action owners, deadlines or reasons. Separate the output into: meeting title and date, attendees, apologies, decisions agreed, actions with one owner and deadline where explicitly stated, discussion points, unresolved questions, and next meeting details. Preserve disagreement where it matters. Flag any statement that could be interpreted in more than one way. Use a neutral, concise UK workplace tone. Do not send anything. After the minutes, provide a short verification list of every item I must compare with the source before sending. Meeting material: [PASTE TRANSCRIPT OR NOTES HERE]. Known meeting details: [PASTE TITLE, DATE, ATTENDEES AND NEXT MEETING DETAILS HERE].

    Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

What it gets wrong

  • AI cannot reliably decide whether an implied comment became a formal decision.
  • AI cannot identify the correct action owner when several people discussed the work without assigning it.
  • AI cannot know whether a sensitive detail should be included in the circulation copy without your workplace context and permission.
  • AI cannot take responsibility for the official record or resolve a dispute between attendees.
  • AI cannot safely send the minutes without a human checking the wording, recipients and permissions.

What caps this at PARTLY: judgement under ambiguity, consent and privacy and legal accountability.

How we scored this

Five axes, each scored nought to two by hand: ten means AI carries the task cleanly, and the thresholds that turn a total into YES, PARTLY or NO are published in the methodology. Each axis name links to its definition.

AxisScore (0–2)
Output2
Inputs1
Verification1
Liability1
Effort delta2
Total7 / 10

The methodology and its thresholds are published in full.

FAQ

Can AI write meeting minutes from a transcript?
Yes. It can organise a transcript into attendees, decisions, actions, owners and unresolved questions. Check every decision and action against the source because a transcript does not always show whether a proposal was actually agreed.
Can AI send meeting minutes for me?
Some meeting tools can help prepare and track minutes, but you should approve the final text and recipient list before anything is sent. The person sending the message remains responsible for errors, confidential information and sending it to the wrong people.
Is it safe to use AI for meeting notes?
Only where your organisation permits the tool and the meeting participants have been told how recording or transcription will be used. Remove unnecessary personal or confidential information, and do not upload material to an unapproved service.
What is the best AI tool for meeting minutes?
Sembly is a purpose-built option that writes minutes and tracks decisions and tasks. Fathom, Fireflies.ai, Notta, Otter.ai and tl;dv also record, transcribe or summarise meetings, so your choice should follow your approved meeting platform and data rules.

Nearby answers

All Diaries & meetings rulings

Assessed by gpt-5.6-luna (gpt-5.6-luna) on 2026-08-13, second-checked by an independent model. Wrong somewhere? Email [email protected] and it gets re-checked.

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