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As of 13 August 2026, AI can write minutes for your work meeting.
Most people should hand this to a purpose-built tool.
Can you do it?
5 minutesto a draft.
30 minutesto something you’d act on.
Cost, all in£0
Skill needednone
Who has to check ita colleague
What the alternative costsNo priced human alternative is provided in the available tool data.
If this goes wrong: the minutes record the wrong decision or assign an action to the wrong person, causing avoidable work and a dispute about what was agreed.
What to actually do
Use a tool built for this
The route this page recommends
Do it yourself
Second choiceA chat interface, no skill needed, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.
How to actually do it
- Open the meeting agenda, calendar invitation and any notes or transcript, and remove material that you do not have permission to share with an AI service.
- Gather the meeting title, date, attendees, apologies, agenda and the full notes or transcript in one document.
- Paste the prompt above into an approved AI chat and replace [PASTE HERE] with those meeting materials.
- Ask the AI to produce the minutes using only the supplied material, with [CHECK] beside anything unclear rather than filling gaps.
- Compare every decision, action owner and deadline in the draft with the original notes or transcript, correcting wording and deleting anything unsupported.
- Send the checked draft to the chair or another colleague who attended, ask them to confirm the decisions and actions, then apply their corrections.
- Save the approved minutes in the team’s usual location and send them to the intended attendees.
Prompt
Write formal, concise minutes for the work meeting described below. Use only the information supplied and invent nothing. Separate confirmed decisions, actions, discussion points, risks and unresolved questions. For every action, include the owner and deadline only when they are explicitly stated. Distinguish a proposal from an agreed decision. Do not infer agreement, responsibility, dates or motives. Mark any unclear or conflicting point as [CHECK]. Use neutral UK workplace English and do not include irrelevant small talk. Start with the meeting title, date, attendees and apologies if supplied, then use clear headings and bullet points. Finish with a short list of points that need checking by someone who attended. Meeting details and source notes or transcript: [PASTE HERE]
Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.
Hand it to a person
The distant thirdA person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.
What it gets wrong
- AI cannot know whether a casual comment was understood as a formal decision unless the source makes that clear.
- AI cannot reliably infer the correct owner when several people discussed an action or when workplace roles are not stated.
- AI cannot judge which sensitive discussion should be omitted from the circulated version without your organisation’s context and permission.
- AI cannot approve the minutes on behalf of the chair or attendees.
- AI cannot resolve a disagreement about what the meeting actually agreed.
Even on a YES, the friction has a name: judgement under ambiguity, stakes of error and context depth.
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.
| Axis | Score (0–2) |
|---|---|
| Output | 2 |
| Inputs | 2 |
| Verification | 1 |
| Liability | 1 |
| Effort delta | 2 |
| Total | 8 / 10 |
The methodology and its thresholds are published in full.
FAQ
- Can ChatGPT write minutes for a meeting?
- Yes. Give it the agenda and reliable notes or a transcript, and ask it to separate decisions, actions and discussion points without inventing missing details. You still need to check the draft and have an attendee confirm ambiguous points.
- Can AI take minutes from a meeting recording?
- It can turn a supplied transcript or recording transcript into draft minutes, if your organisation permits the recording and sharing of that material. Check every decision, action owner and deadline against the recording or notes before circulating the minutes.
- How do I get AI to write accurate meeting minutes?
- Tell it to use only the source material, distinguish proposals from decisions, and mark uncertainty instead of guessing. Then compare the draft with the notes and ask the chair or another attendee to confirm the final version.
- Is it safe to use AI for work meeting minutes?
- It depends on your employer’s approved tools and the sensitivity of the meeting. Do not paste confidential, personal or commercially sensitive material into a service without permission, and remove unsupported claims before sending the minutes.
Nearby answers
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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