Meeting Notes Template: A Markdown Version to Copy
A good meeting notes template has five parts: the basics (date, who was there, the goal), the agenda, the decisions, the action items and the open questions. Each action item gets an owner and a due date. Everything else is optional. Below is a Markdown version you can copy into any notes app, plus three shorter variants. The last section shows how to have an AI fill it in from a transcript.
Markdown is a good home for meeting notes because it’s plain text: it opens in any app, it’s searchable, and an AI assistant can read it without a converter. If you’re new to it, Markdown for beginners covers the syntax in ten minutes.
What should a meeting notes template include?
Keep the sections that someone will look for later. A month after the meeting, people rarely ask “what did we discuss?” They ask “what did we decide, and who was doing what?”
| Section | What goes in it | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Basics | Date, attendees, goal of the meeting | Lets you find the note and know who to ask |
| Agenda | The topics, in order | Shows what was meant to be covered |
| Notes | Short points per topic | Context for the decisions |
| Decisions | What was agreed, one line each | The part people search for later |
| Action items | Task, owner, due date | Turns the meeting into work |
| Open questions | What’s still unresolved | Becomes the next agenda |
What does the Markdown template look like?
Copy this block into a new note. The lines at the top are properties: plain key: value pairs that apps like Obsidian and Valta show as fields (Obsidian properties explains how they work).
---
type: meeting
date: 2026-10-30
attendees: [Name, Name, Name]
project: "[[Project name]]"
---
# [Meeting title], 2026-10-30
**Goal:** [one sentence: what this meeting should settle]
## Agenda
1. [Topic]
2. [Topic]
3. [Topic]
## Notes
### [Topic 1]
- [point]
- [point]
### [Topic 2]
- [point]
## Decisions
- [What was decided, in one line]
## Action items
- [ ] [Task], owner: [Name], due: [date]
- [ ] [Task], owner: [Name], due: [date]
## Open questions
- [Question], ask: [Name]
## Next meeting
[date], to cover: [topics]
Two details make it more useful than a blank page. The [[Project name]] link ties every meeting about the same project together, so the project note shows all of them as backlinks. And the - [ ] checkboxes render as tickable tasks in most Markdown apps.
Which variants work for one-on-ones, client calls and standups?
The full template is right for a project meeting. Shorter meetings need fewer sections.
One-on-one
# 1:1 with [Name], [date]
## Their topics
- [topic]
## My topics
- [topic]
## Feedback
- [given or received, one line each]
## Action items
- [ ] [Task], owner: [Name], due: [date]
Client call
# [Client] call, [date]
**Attendees:** [names, with their roles]
**Goal:** [what we need from this call]
## What the client said
- [their words, as close as possible]
## Decisions and approvals
- [what they signed off on]
## Action items
- [ ] [Task], owner: [Name], due: [date]
## Follow-up email sent: [yes/no, date]
Daily standup
# Standup, [date]
| Person | Yesterday | Today | Blocked by |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Name] | [done] | [plan] | [blocker or none] |
How do you take meeting notes that people use?
- Write the goal before the meeting. One sentence at the top. If you can’t write it, the meeting may not need to happen.
- Capture decisions as they happen. Say “so we’re agreed that…” out loud and type it straight into Decisions.
- Never leave an action item without an owner. “Someone should update the deck” means nobody will.
- Use real dates. “Next week” is ambiguous a week later; “2026-11-06” isn’t.
- Send or share the note within the hour. People correct mistakes while the meeting is fresh.
- Link it. Put the project and the people in
[[links]]so the note shows up where someone will look for it.
Can an AI fill in the template for you?
Yes, if you give it a transcript or your rough notes. Paste both the template and the text into Claude or ChatGPT with an instruction like this:
Here is a meeting transcript:
<transcript>[paste]</transcript>
Fill in the meeting notes template below using only what the transcript says.
Every action item needs an owner and a due date; if the transcript doesn't give one, write [UNCLEAR].
Put decisions in one line each. Don't add anything that wasn't said.
<template>[paste the template]</template>
The rule about [UNCLEAR] matters. Without it, a model will often fill gaps with a plausible guess, and a made-up due date in meeting notes is worse than a blank one. Read the decisions and action items against your memory of the meeting before you share it.
The other half of the problem is where the note goes afterwards. A note pasted into a chat is gone when the chat scrolls away, and the next conversation starts without it (AI memory explains why). Saving the notes somewhere your AI can read them later means you can ask “what did we decide about pricing in October?” and get an answer from the actual note.
FAQ
What is the best format for meeting notes?
A short structure with decisions and action items as their own sections. Bulleted notes under each agenda topic are enough; full sentences are only needed for decisions.
Should meeting notes include everything that was said?
No. Notes are a record of outcomes, not a transcript. Keep the transcript separately if you have one, and link to it from the note.
What’s the difference between meeting notes and meeting minutes?
Minutes are a formal record, usually for boards and committees, with motions and votes. Meeting notes are informal and focus on decisions and next steps. The template above can serve as lightweight minutes.
Where should I keep meeting notes?
In the same place as the rest of your project notes, one note per meeting, linked to the project. A folder like Meetings/2026 keeps them easy to browse.
Can I use this template in Notion, Obsidian or Google Docs?
Yes. It’s plain Markdown, so it works as is in Obsidian and Valta, pastes into Notion with the formatting intact, and reads fine as plain text anywhere else.
Where Valta fits
Valta is a vault of Markdown notes that Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and any AI with MCP can read and write. Paste a transcript into your AI, ask it to fill in the template above, then say “save this in Meetings”. Valta files the note in that folder with its [[links]], suggests related notes to link, and keeps it for the next chat: weeks later you can ask any connected AI what was decided, and it reads the note instead of guessing.
No AI runs inside Valta; the assistant you already use does the writing. The Free plan gives you one vault and up to 100 notes, and you can export your Markdown on every plan. Pro is $9 a month or $90 a year for up to 5 vaults and version history. It starts with a 7-day free trial, then that price; cancel before the trial ends and you pay nothing. The price stays low because Valta runs no AI of its own, so a call costs milliseconds of server time, not model fees. See the pricing section, or start your free vault.