How to Write Meeting Minutes (and When to Let AI Do It)

Meeting minutes are the formal written record of a meeting: who attended, what was discussed, what was decided, and what actions were assigned. For boards, committees, and regulated bodies, minutes are a legal record with required elements. For working teams, a lighter-weight version — the recap — serves the same core function: a durable, shared record of decisions and commitments.

The standard structure of formal minutes

• Header: meeting name, date, time, location or platform, chair, and minute-taker.
• Attendance: present, absent with apologies, and any guests.
• Approval of previous minutes: formal bodies confirm the prior record before proceeding.
• Item-by-item record: for each agenda item — a brief summary of discussion, the decision or resolution (with vote counts where applicable), and assigned actions.
• Action register: every action with owner and due date, consolidated in one table.
• Next meeting and adjournment time.

The skill of good minute-taking

• Record decisions verbatim, discussion in summary: the exact wording of a resolution matters; the debate that led there needs only its main threads.
• Attribute positions only when it matters: formal bodies record who moved and seconded; working teams usually should not turn minutes into a who-said-what ledger.
• Write within 24 hours: minute quality decays with memory. Same-day drafting is the single biggest quality factor.
• Circulate for correction: minutes become authoritative when attendees have had the chance to object.

What AI does well — and where humans stay in the loop

AI meeting tools now handle the mechanical layer completely: MeetOye's Oya produces the transcript, extracts decisions and action items with owners, and delivers a structured recap to all attendees at meeting end. For working teams, this recap simply replaces minutes. For formal bodies, the right pattern is AI-drafted, human-ratified: Oya's output becomes the draft, and the secretary edits for required formal elements (motions, seconders, vote counts) before circulation. The hours of transcription-from-memory disappear; the human judgment about what the record must say remains.