Most minutes fail in one of two directions: they’re a transcript nobody reads, or they’re so summarized that the decisions vanish. Good minutes hold exactly three things — the decisions that were made, the action items with owners, and the open questions that carried over. Everything else is prose. Here’s a template that fits on one screen, and the routine for filling it in before the next meeting starts.

The template

Paste this into your notes app and fill it during or right after the call:

MEETING MINUTES — <date>, <meeting name>

ATTENDEES
<who was there, one line>

DECISIONS
- <what was agreed> — decided by <name/room>
- <what was agreed> — decided by <name/room>

ACTION ITEMS
- <task> — owner: <name> — due: <date>
- <task> — owner: <name> — due: <date>

OPEN QUESTIONS
- <question that needs another meeting or another decision>

LINKS
- <recording, docs, dashboards, tickets that were mentioned>

The rules that make it work: every decision names who decided it, no action item exists without an owner and a date, and open questions get a line even when the answer is “we’ll decide next time.” If a section is empty, delete the heading — an empty ACTION ITEMS block is itself information.

The template, filled in

An example is worth a blank template, so here’s the same structure after a real‑shaped call:

MEETING MINUTES — May 14, checkout revamp

ATTENDEES
Priya (PM), Jonas (FE), Sara (QA), me

DECISIONS
- Ship one-page checkout, drop the wizard — decided by Priya
- Defer wallet payments to June — decided by the room

ACTION ITEMS
- Rebuild the address form — owner: Jonas — due: May 21
- Regression pass on Safari — owner: Sara — due: May 23
- Draft launch note — owner: me — due: May 20

OPEN QUESTIONS
- Do we keep guest checkout analytics? Needs the data team.

LINKS
- Recording: <link> · Figma: <link> · Ticket: PAY-412

Note what’s missing: the thirty‑minute debate about wizard versus one‑page. The minutes record that it was decided and by whom — the reasoning lives in the recording, linked at the bottom for anyone who needs it.

Writing minutes while you present

If you’re the one running the meeting, write the DECISIONS section live — deciding is the meeting’s output, and it’s easiest to capture at the moment it happens. Two habits make it work: say the decision out loud before moving on (“so we’re agreed: one‑page checkout”), and type it while you say it. Action items get their owners in the same breath — “Jonas takes the form, due the 21st” — because a task assigned after the call is a task nobody agreed to. Everything else (the summary, the polish, the send) can wait for the five‑minute routine below.

The five‑minute routine

Capture decisions the moment they’re made. Decisions are the hardest to reconstruct afterward; write them down as they land, in the meeting, in the DECISIONS section.
Turn every “I’ll take that” into an action item with an owner and a date before the call ends. An action item without an owner is a wish.
Park open questions instead of debating them. If a discussion runs past its time box, the outcome is a documented open question, not a bad decision made in a hurry.
Link the materials — the recording, the doc, the ticket — so a reader can go from a decision to its evidence in one click.
Send within the hour. Minutes sent the same hour get corrections while memories are fresh; minutes sent the next day get read by nobody.

Where the recording helps

If the call was recorded, the minutes write themselves in the right order: the decisions and action items are already in the audio, and a transcript makes them findable. The platforms can record for you where policy allows, and a screen recorder can capture the call window without a bot joining — the trade‑offs are in how to record a Zoom meeting on your Mac. Snapbak’s planned meeting minutes go one further — a live local transcript, structured minutes after — but that’s a roadmap item, not today’s product.

What minutes are not

They are not the transcript. A transcript is the full record for people who want to search it; minutes are the decisions for people who were not there. If you’re unsure which one a request is for, that distinction is the whole answer — I’ve written it up separately in meeting notes vs transcript.

Snapbak, for the parts around the meeting

While meeting capture is in the works, Snapbak handles the capture that surrounds the call: record the demo you’re walking through, and every recording gets automatic notes — a title, a summary, chapters, and action items — computed on your Mac or with your own AI key. The features have the details, and Snapbak is free for the first 100 users.