Four plain-text formats: team meeting, client call, one-on-one, and project kickoff. Select one, copy it, paste it into whatever you already write in, and fill in the blanks.
The short version: pick the template below that matches your meeting, copy the whole block, and paste it into a blank document before the meeting starts. Each one is plain text, so it works in Google Docs, Notion, Word, or a plain email with no reformatting needed.
For a recurring status check-in, a weekly sync, or any meeting with more than three people where topics come from an agenda.
| Meeting: [name] Date: [date] Attendees: [names] Purpose (1 line) Topics covered - - Decisions - Action items - [task] | owner: [name] | due: [date] - [task] | owner: [name] | due: [date] Next meeting: [date, if scheduled] |
For a call with someone outside your company, where you need a record of what they asked for and what you promised, separate from your own team's shorthand.
| Client: [name] Date: [date] Attendees (ours): [names] Attendees (theirs): [names] Summary (1-2 sentences) What the client asked for - What we committed to - [item] | owner: [name] | due: [date] Open questions for the client - Follow-up sent: [date] |
For a recurring conversation with one person, a direct report, a manager, or a mentor, where the useful record is less about tasks and more about what carries over to next time.
| With: [name] Date: [date] How they're doing (1-2 lines) Wins since last time - Blockers or concerns - Feedback I gave - Things I said I'd follow up on - [item] | due: [date] |
For the first meeting of a new project, where the goal is to leave with a shared understanding of scope and who owns what, not just a list of action items.
| Project: [name] Date: [date] Attendees: [names] Goal (1-2 sentences) Scope: in - Scope: out - Roles - [name]: [responsibility] Milestones - [milestone] | target date: [date] Risks or open questions - First action items - [task] | owner: [name] | due: [date] |
A template solves the blank-page problem, but someone still has to fill it in while listening, which is the part that's actually hard in a fast-moving call.
Amlin is a Mac app that listens to a meeting the same way you do, by picking up the sound your computer is already playing (so nothing joins the call as a visible participant) along with your own microphone. When the meeting ends, it turns the conversation into a structured summary, decisions, action items with owners and due dates, in roughly the shape of the templates above, without you typing any of it during the call. It also keeps one running list of action items across every meeting, so a promise made in a client call three weeks ago and a task from yesterday's kickoff live in the same place instead of four separate documents. Meeting audio is never stored; it's used to write the note and then discarded.
Amlin runs on macOS 13 or later on Apple silicon, and the free plan covers about 5 or 6 meetings a month with your full note history kept.
Match it to who's in the room. A recurring team meeting or a project kickoff needs a template built around the agenda and the plan. A client call or a one-on-one needs one built around a single relationship, so past commitments and personal context are easy to find later.
No. Delete any section that doesn't apply to that meeting before you start. A template is a starting shape, not a form you have to complete in full. An empty section left in the note just makes it look unfinished.
Yes. They're plain text with no special formatting, so they paste cleanly into Google Docs, Notion, a plain email, Slack, or a basic text editor. Add bullets or headings styling afterward if the tool you're using supports it.
Save it somewhere you'll actually open it again, a pinned doc, a snippet tool, or a saved email draft, rather than retyping it each time. Pasting a saved template takes five seconds; recreating one from memory is the step most people quietly stop doing after a week.
If the fill-in part is what keeps slipping, Amlin does that part for you.
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