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Meeting summary examples

A good meeting summary answers three questions in order: what was decided, what happens next and who owns it, and what was discussed but left open. Everything else is optional. Below are four worked examples in that shape — a client call, an internal standup, a sales discovery call and a site visit — each written the way that kind of meeting actually needs.

3Questions every summary has to answer, in this order
4Worked examples below, each a different kind of meeting
DecisionsGo first. Not attendees, not agenda, not a wall of transcript
OwnersEvery action needs one, with a date. Otherwise it is a wish

Worked examples

Four summaries, four shapes.

Every example below is invented for this page. No real client, meeting or person appears in any of them.

Client call

Tuesday 9 Sep · 34 min · Alvarez account

  • Decided — Scope for phase two is confirmed at the three deliverables in the 2 Sep proposal. The fourth item is deferred, not dropped.
  • Next — Send revised SOW by Thu 11 Sep (me). Client to confirm the billing contact by Fri 12 Sep (R. Alvarez).
  • Open — Their legal team has not seen the data-processing terms. Nobody has a date for that.
  • Said, worth keeping — "If phase two lands before the quarter closes, budget for phase three is already approved." That is the real deadline.

Internal standup

Monday 8 Sep · 12 min · Platform team

  • Decided — The migration ships behind a flag, not on a branch. Rollback stays one config change.
  • Next — Flag wired by Wed (Priya). Load test on staging Thu (Tom). Go/no-go Friday morning.
  • Blocked — Staging still points at the old queue; nobody owns fixing it. Assigned to Tom in the meeting.
  • Not discussed — The Q4 roadmap item, again. Third week running.

Sales discovery

Wednesday 10 Sep · 41 min · Northwind, first call

  • The problem in their words — "We lose two days a month reconciling numbers that should already agree."
  • Who decides — Ops director runs the evaluation; the CFO signs. The CFO was not on this call.
  • Timeline — They want a decision before their fiscal year ends in November.
  • Next — Send the reconciliation case study by Fri (me). Ops director to get the CFO onto the next call.
  • Risk — They are also evaluating an incumbent upgrade, which costs them nothing to choose.

Site visit

Thursday 11 Sep · 2h 10min · Bay Street, walkthrough

  • Observed — Two of the four riser cupboards are inaccessible; the third is full of contractor material.
  • Decided — Survey proceeds on the two accessible risers now; the others are scheduled separately.
  • Next — Site manager to clear cupboard 3 by 18 Sep. Re-visit booked for 22 Sep.
  • Flagged — The floor plan we were given does not match what is built on level 4. Ask for as-builts before the re-visit.

Questions

The ones people actually ask.

What should a meeting summary include?
Decisions first, then actions with an owner and a date, then what is still open. Attendee lists and agendas belong at the bottom or nowhere — nobody rereads a summary to find out who attended.
How long should a meeting summary be?
Short enough that someone who missed the meeting reads all of it. For most meetings that is under 200 words. If a summary needs headings to navigate, it has become a transcript.
What is the difference between meeting minutes and a meeting summary?
Minutes are a formal record of proceedings, often required by governance rules, and tend to be chronological. A summary is written for people who need to act, and is organised by decision rather than by time.
Should a meeting summary include quotes?
One or two, when the exact words matter — a commitment, a constraint, a number. A quote is evidence; a paragraph of quotes is a transcript nobody asked for.
Can AI write the meeting summary?
It can write the draft, and it is good at the mechanical parts: who said what, what was committed, what the dates were. The judgement about what mattered is still yours, which is why every serious tool gives you a draft to edit rather than a finished record.

Keep reading

Related guides.

Meeting action items templateThe four fields, and how each one fails. How to transcribe meetings automaticallyFour ways, and what each one breaks on. Notes in client meetingsFive approaches, and what each signals.

Where this comes from

We make a pen that does this.

Scriben is a real ballpoint that records the room to its own storage for up to 18 hours, with no phone and no network, then turns the conversation into a transcript, a summary and the work that follows. It is $129 once. This page would be worth reading whether or not you buy one — that is rather the point of it.

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