How To Write a Meeting Summary (With Examples)
Jan 20, 2026
•
7
MIN READ
AI Summary by Fellow
Every meeting generates valuable information: decisions made, commitments given, and context that shapes future work. Without a clear summary, that intelligence scatters across inboxes, memory, and hastily scribbled notes. Within days, your team is asking, "What did we actually decide?" and "Who was supposed to handle that?"
A meeting summary solves this by distilling a conversation into its essential outcomes. The challenge? Writing one manually means someone isn't fully engaged in the discussion, and human note-takers inevitably miss details.
Modern teams are solving this differently. An AI meeting assistant captures everything automatically, generating summaries that include decisions, action items, and key discussion points without anyone having to divide their attention between participating and documenting.
Already spending too much time writing meeting recaps? Fellow automates summaries instantly.
Start a 14-day trial today - no credit card required →
What is a meeting summary?
A meeting summary is a concise document that captures the essential outcomes of a discussion: what was decided, what actions need to happen, who's responsible, and when things are due. Unlike full transcripts or detailed meeting minutes, a summary focuses on what matters most for moving work forward.
Effective meeting summaries serve three purposes:
Accountability: They create a clear record of commitments and deadlines
Alignment: They ensure everyone leaves with the same understanding
Accessibility: They inform team members who couldn't attend and provide searchable reference for future decisions
The best summaries are brief (300 to 500 words), outcome-focused, and shared promptly while the conversation is still fresh.
How do you write an effective meeting summary?
Writing a strong meeting summary requires capturing the right information without drowning in unnecessary detail. Focus on outcomes rather than process, and prioritize clarity over completeness.
Start with context and appreciation
Open your summary by acknowledging participants and establishing context. A brief thank-you sets a collaborative tone and reinforces that contributions matter. Include the meeting date, attendees, and primary purpose so anyone reading the summary later understands the setting.
Prioritize decisions over discussion
Not everything discussed belongs in the summary. Focus on what was actually decided, not the deliberation process that led there. A productive one-hour meeting might generate only three or four key decisions worth documenting. Capture those clearly, and leave out the tangents and small talk.
For each decision, include:
What was decided
Any relevant context or constraints
Who needs to know
Document action items with owners and deadlines
The most critical element of any meeting summary is clear meeting action items. Every task should include three components: what needs to happen, who's responsible, and when it's due.
Instead of writing "Follow up with the client," write "@Monica: Send revised proposal to Dahlia Group by Friday, August 20."
Specific, assigned action items drive accountability. Vague ones get forgotten.
Attach supporting materials
Include links to relevant documents, presentations, or data discussed during the meeting. When critical materials live alongside the summary, you reduce back-and-forth messages and give everyone immediate access to what they need. Team members who missed the meeting especially appreciate direct access to supporting files.
Share the summary promptly
Circulate your summary within hours of the meeting, not days. Quick distribution keeps decisions fresh, enables immediate action planning, and prevents the "wait, what did we agree on?" conversations that derail momentum.
Struggling to capture everything while staying engaged in discussions? Fellow generates AI meeting notes and summaries automatically, so you can participate fully without sacrificing documentation.
What should a meeting summary include?
Every effective meeting summary contains the same core elements, regardless of meeting type. Use this checklist to ensure you're capturing what matters.
Essential components
Meeting context: Date, time, attendees, and purpose
Key decisions: What was resolved or agreed upon
Action items: Tasks with owners and due dates
Important discussion points: Critical context that shaped decisions
Next steps: Follow-up meeting date or milestones
Attached materials: Links to relevant documents or resources
What to leave out
Side conversations and small talk
Detailed deliberation that didn't affect outcomes
Information already documented elsewhere
Opinions that didn't lead to decisions
Meeting summary template
Use this template to structure your summaries consistently:
Subject: Meeting Summary: [Meeting Name] – [Date]
Hi [Team Name],
Thank you for your participation in today's meeting. Here's a summary of what we covered:
Key Decisions:
[Decision 1 with relevant context]
[Decision 2 with relevant context]
[Decision 3 with relevant context]
Action Items:
@[Name]: [Task description] – Due: [Date]
@[Name]: [Task description] – Due: [Date]
@[Name]: [Task description] – Due: [Date]
Supporting Materials:
[Link to document/presentation]
Next Meeting: [Date and time]
Best, [Your Name]
How can you automate meeting summaries with AI?
Manual meeting summaries require someone to divide their attention between participating and documenting. AI meeting assistants eliminate this tradeoff entirely by capturing, transcribing, and summarizing meetings automatically.
How AI meeting assistants work
An AI meeting assistant joins your meeting (visibly or through botless recording), captures the full conversation, and generates a structured summary including decisions, action items, and key discussion points. The entire process happens automatically, with summaries ready to share within minutes of the meeting ending.
Customize your summary format with AI templates
Not every meeting needs the same summary format. Sales calls require different documentation than engineering standups or board meetings. The best AI meeting assistants let you customize how summaries are structured using AI note templates.
With Fellow, you can create templates that format your summaries and meeting minutes exactly how your team needs them. Want a specific section for customer objections in sales calls? Need engineering meetings to highlight blockers and technical decisions? Create a template once, and Fellow automatically applies that format to every relevant meeting.
Summarize past meetings on demand with Ask Fellow
Sometimes you need a summary for a meeting that happened weeks ago, or you need to synthesize insights across an entire meeting series. Ask Fellow handles both scenarios.
You can ask Fellow to summarize any past meeting in your library, even if you didn't generate a summary at the time. More powerfully, you can ask Fellow to summarize patterns across multiple meetings: "Summarize the key decisions from our last five product planning sessions" or "What themes came up across this quarter's customer calls?" This transforms your meeting archive from static recordings into actionable intelligence.
Benefits of automated summaries
Full participation: When AI handles documentation, everyone can focus on contributing rather than transcribing.
Consistent accuracy: AI captures everything said, eliminating the selective memory and missed details that plague manual notes.
Instant availability: Summaries are ready immediately after the meeting, not hours or days later.
Searchable intelligence: AI-generated summaries become part of a searchable recording library, so you can find past decisions and context instantly.
What to look for in an AI meeting assistant
The best AI meeting assistants combine accurate transcription with intelligent summarization and enterprise-grade security. Key features to evaluate:
Multi-platform support: Works across Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, in-person meetings, and Slack huddles
Flexible recording: Options for visible bot or botless capture
Customizable templates: Format summaries to match different meeting types and team needs
Automatic action item extraction: Identifies tasks, owners, and deadlines without manual tagging
Organization-wide search: Query across all your meetings to find decisions and context
Enterprise security: SOC 2 Type II certification, HIPAA compliance, and no training on customer data
Fellow provides all of these capabilities, plus Ask Fellow, which lets you query your meeting history with natural questions like "What did we decide about the Q3 roadmap?" or "Summarize the key themes from our last quarter of customer calls."
Why do teams switch from manual to AI-generated summaries?
Organizations using manual meeting documentation face predictable challenges: inconsistent quality, delayed distribution, and the constant tension between participating and note-taking. AI meeting assistants solve these problems systematically.
The cost of manual summaries
When someone manually writes meeting summaries, you're paying for that time twice: once during the meeting (when they're partially disengaged) and again afterward (when they're writing instead of doing other work). Multiply this across every meeting in your organization, and the hidden cost becomes significant.
What changes with AI
Teams using Fellow report faster summary distribution, more consistent documentation, and fuller participation in discussions. Because every meeting is captured and searchable, decisions don't get lost, and teams spend less time recreating context that already exists somewhere in their meeting history.
Your meetings already contain the answers your team needs. Fellow turns conversations into shared, searchable intelligence that the whole organization can access. Trusted by teams at Shopify, HubSpot, Vidyard, and Motive. Start your free trial →
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between meeting minutes and a meeting summary?
Meeting minutes are detailed, formal records that document everything discussed, including attendees, timestamps, motions, and votes. They serve as official documentation, often for legal or compliance purposes. Meeting summaries are shorter, outcome-focused documents that capture key decisions and action items without exhaustive detail. Most business meetings need summaries rather than full minutes. For comprehensive meeting documentation, consider using meeting minutes templates alongside AI-generated summaries.
How long should a meeting summary be?
An effective meeting summary is typically 300 to 500 words. It should be long enough to capture all key decisions and action items, but short enough that recipients will actually read it. If your summary regularly exceeds 500 words, you're likely including too much detail about discussion process rather than focusing on outcomes.
Can AI meeting assistants work without a bot joining the call?
Yes. Some AI meeting assistants like Fellow support botless recording, which captures meetings without a visible bot joining the call. This works across Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, in-person meetings, and Slack huddles. Botless recording is particularly useful for sensitive conversations or when participants prefer not to have a visible AI presence.
How do you ensure meeting summaries are secure for enterprise use?
Enterprise-grade AI meeting assistants should have SOC 2 Type II certification, HIPAA and GDPR compliance, and clear policies about data usage. Fellow maintains strict privacy controls, never trains AI models on customer data, and provides permission-based access aligned to organizational roles. This ensures only authorized team members can access specific recordings and summaries.
What's the best way to share meeting summaries with people who weren't in the meeting?
Distribute summaries through your team's primary communication channel (email, Slack, or project management tool) within hours of the meeting. Include all relevant context and attached materials so readers can understand decisions without asking follow-up questions. AI meeting assistants with integrations can automatically distribute summaries to the right channels, eliminating manual sharing.
How do you write action items that actually get completed?
Effective action items have three components: a specific task, a single owner, and a clear deadline. Write "@Monica: Send revised proposal to Dahlia Group by Friday, August 20" rather than "Follow up with client." AI meeting assistants can automatically extract and track action items, syncing them to project management tools like Asana, Jira, or through Zapier to over 8,000 apps.
Can you customize AI-generated meeting summaries for different meeting types?
Yes. The best AI meeting assistants let you create custom AI note templates that format summaries differently based on meeting type. For example, you might want sales calls to highlight customer objections and next steps, while engineering standups focus on blockers and sprint progress. With Fellow, you create a template once and it automatically applies that structure to every relevant meeting.
Turn every meeting into searchable intelligence
Meeting summaries bridge the gap between conversation and action. Done well, they create accountability, align teams, and preserve context that would otherwise disappear.
The question isn't whether your meetings need better documentation. It's whether you'll continue spending time on manual summaries or let AI handle it automatically.
Fellow is the secure AI meeting assistant that captures every conversation across Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, in-person meetings, and Slack huddles, then turns them into searchable intelligence your whole organization can access. SOC 2 Type II certified, HIPAA compliant, and we never train on your data.
Stop letting decisions, context, and accountability disappear after every meeting. Try Fellow free →
Record, transcribe and summarize every meeting with the only AI meeting assistant built from the ground up with privacy and security in mind.
