For consultants after every client meeting
Meeting Minutes Generator From a Transcript
Paste the transcript or drop the file. Get the decisions, each action with its owner and date, open questions, and a follow-up email to send.
Free to start. No card needed.
| Action | Owner | Due |
|---|---|---|
| Send last quarter’s store sales | Raj (client) | Fri 15 May |
| Revise the phase 2 plan | Tom | [date to confirm] |
| Book the store visits | [owner to confirm] | Before the next call |
| Share the draft staff survey | Ana | Wed 20 May |
Not yet decided: moving go-live to July. “We’ll probably push it, but let me check with finance.” Dana, 31:05
What you'll get
Decisions, actions with owners and a client email from your transcript
- Decisions made, each with the line or timestamp that shows it
- Action items with an owner and due date, only where someone said them
- A short follow-up email to the client, ready to check and send
Before and after
Your transcript in. Minutes you can send.
A 45-minute Teams transcript of a weekly call with a retail client: five speakers, timestamps, a debate about the go-live date, and three people promising to “look into it”.
Decisions 1. Phase 2 starts with the northern stores. Confirmed by Dana, client sponsor: “North first, that’s settled.” 12:40 Action items 1. Send last quarter’s store sales · Raj (client) · Friday 15 May 2. Revise the phase 2 plan · Tom · [date to confirm] 3. Book the store visits · [owner to confirm] · before the next call Not yet decided Moving go-live to July. Dana: “We’ll probably push it, but let me check with finance.” 31:05 Follow-up email Subject: Weekly call, 14 May: decisions and next steps Hi Dana, thanks for today. We agreed to start phase 2 with the northern stores…
Owners and dates appear only when someone said them, so nobody gets an action they never agreed to.
Why it works
What should meeting minutes include?
Meeting minutes record what a meeting decided and who agreed to do what by when, not a replay of the conversation. The Robert's Rules of Order FAQ puts it plainly: minutes are "a record of what was done at a meeting, not a record of what was said." River reads your whole transcript first. Then it writes the meeting details, the decisions, an action items table, the open questions and a short follow-up email to the client. Every decision points to the line or timestamp where it was made.
The hard part of minutes is attribution, and that is where quick summaries slip. River names an owner or a due date only when someone said it in the meeting. Otherwise the row reads [owner to confirm] or [date to confirm], so nothing is quietly assigned. A decision is credited to the person who made or confirmed it, never to whoever first suggested it. Anything tentative, like "we'll probably push go-live to July", goes under Not yet decided with what it is waiting on, so the client never reads it as agreed.
Use it after any client meeting: a weekly check-in, a workshop, a steering committee or a scoping call. Paste the transcript from Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Otter or Granola, or drop the file. In Teams, by default, organizers and co-organizers can download the transcript as a Word file. A week of minutes then feeds your client update in the status report generator. For a round of stakeholder interviews, use interview synthesis instead, which counts themes across conversations rather than listing actions.
What lands in your doc
What's in your meeting minutes
- Meeting title, date and attendees exactly as stated, with any gaps marked for you to confirm
- Each decision in one sentence, with who made it and the quote or timestamp behind it
- An action items table with owners and due dates only where someone actually said them
- Tentative items like "we'll probably" kept apart under Not yet decided, with what each one waits on
- Open questions left unanswered, plus a parking lot of topics pushed to a later meeting
- A short follow-up email to the client that recaps the decisions, the actions and the next meeting
How it works
From transcript to minutes
Paste or drop
Paste the transcript or your notes, or drop the file from Zoom, Teams, Meet, Otter or Granola.
River reads it all
It reads the whole meeting before writing, noting who decided what and who took on each task.
Get your minutes
Decisions, actions, open questions and a client email land in one doc, each pointing to its source.
Send and follow up
Fill the placeholders, send the email, then chase open actions or roll them into your status report.
How to write meeting minutes by hand
Start with the details a reader will need months later: the meeting's name, the date, who attended and who sent apologies. Then record outcomes, not the conversation. For each agenda item, write what was decided in one sentence and who decided it. If the room only leaned one way, say so. "Leaning toward a July go-live, pending finance" is a different message from "go-live moves to July", and a client who reads the second will plan around it.
Next, write each action as one task that starts with a verb, with one owner and a due date. Use a person's name rather than a team, because "the client team" usually means nobody. When the meeting didn't settle who or when, don't fill the gap with a guess. Leave a visible placeholder and ask in the follow-up email, which is far easier than unpicking an action someone never agreed to. Risks and issues raised in the meeting belong in your RAID log.
Send the minutes within a day, while people still remember the meeting, as a short email the client can reply to. Lead with the decisions, then the actions with owners and dates, then the open questions. Ask for corrections by a set date, so the record is settled before the next meeting. When the meeting was a steering committee, keep each decision's wording identical in the minutes and the next weekly status report.
Questions consultants ask
Common questions
What are meeting minutes, and what should they include?
Meeting minutes are the written record of what a meeting decided and who agreed to do what by when. They include the meeting's name and date, who attended, the decisions, and each action with an owner and a due date. Add the questions left open and any topics parked for later. Leave out the back-and-forth. One or two pages covers most client meetings.
Can it write minutes from a Zoom or Teams transcript?
Yes. Paste the transcript text, or drop the file as Word, PDF or text. Notes from Otter, Granola or Google Meet work the same way, and so do notes you typed yourself. Speaker names and timestamps help, because each decision can then point to the exact moment. Without them, River points to the speaker and the opening words of the line instead.
What if nobody said who owns an action?
Then the minutes say so. The owner reads [owner to confirm], the due date reads [date to confirm], and both go on a short list to settle with the client. River never fills in the most likely person, because an action pinned on someone who never agreed to it causes more trouble than an honest gap.
How does it tell a decision from an idea?
A decision is something the room agreed, or that the person with the authority settled, such as "North first, that's settled." Words like "probably", "let's aim for" or "subject to finance" don't make a decision. Those items go under Not yet decided, with who said them and what they wait on, so the follow-up email never promises more than the meeting did.
How is this different from a meeting summary?
A summary tells you what was discussed. Minutes tell the client what was decided and who does what next. River points each decision to a quote or timestamp, leaves owners and dates as placeholders unless they were said, and keeps tentative items apart. The minutes also stay in your project's space, where your weekly status report can draw on them.
Is the meeting I paste kept private?
The transcript you drop stays in your own River space unless you choose to share it. River's privacy policy says nothing you upload is used to train AI models, and its AI providers are bound by their agreements with River not to train on it. Check your client agreement for any rules about where meeting records can be kept.
Your next step
More for your project
Send the recap while the meeting is fresh
Paste the transcript or drop the file. Each decision points to the moment it was made, so you can check it before the client reads it.