Learn Cue · task-based tutorial
Turn Meeting Notes into Action Items with Cue
A transcript preserves what was said. An action list should make clear what was decided, who accepted the work, and what still needs an answer. Use Cue to organize that context without turning guesses into commitments.
By the Cue product team · Updated . Written from product-source review. Exercises and outputs are illustrative, not recorded Cue runs. Follow the controls shown in your installed version.
How do you turn meeting notes into action items?
Give Cue Agent a reviewed meeting excerpt and ask for a source-linked table of actions, owners, due dates and open questions. Separate accepted work from suggestions and decisions. Keep missing owners and dates marked as unknown, then confirm assignments with the people involved.
Need: readable notes or a transcript, source labels, and permission to use the excerpt. Result: an action list you can trace back to the meeting and use as context for the next task.
New to Cue? Set up Dictation to enter your words, or set up Agent mode to ask for a task result. Check permissions and the shortcut in your installed version before starting.
Start with a trustworthy meeting record
Long-form voice can capture explanations and constraints that never reach a task tracker. That material becomes useful working context only when you can distinguish the original statement from your interpretation. Keep the recording or notes available under your team's retention and access rules; a summary alone may lose the qualifier that changes a decision.
- For a new meeting, follow the meeting capture workflow, confirm the required permissions and participants' consent, and verify the capture indicator before relying on it. This article begins after you have readable notes or a transcript; it does not demonstrate a recording session.
- Review names, negations, numbers and speaker attribution. “I can look into it” is not the same as “I will deliver it.” Mark unclear speech rather than repairing it by guessing.
- Choose the relevant excerpt. Retain the meeting date, source title and any real timestamps or paragraph identifiers. If none exist, assign your own line labels and say that they are manual labels.
- Open the excerpt in your document or notes app, invoke Cue Agent with the shortcut shown in Settings, and ask it to use that source. If the selected or visible text is unavailable to Cue, supply the excerpt directly. Start with an output in the task, not changes to a shared tracker.
If you are remembering a meeting rather than reading a recording, use the spoken recap workflow and label the input “my recollection.” Do not describe remembered wording as a verbatim transcript or manufacture timestamps for it.
Practice: four statements, four different kinds of output
The following fictional meeting excerpt is a writing exercise. M-01 through M-04 are manual line labels, not recording timestamps.
Source: Cedar planning, 16 November 2026, notes revision 1.
M-01, Mina: “I will send the revised interview questions by 18 November.”
M-02, Rowan: “Could someone check the onboarding error logs before the pilot?”
M-03, Mina: “Let's consider a pilot next week, but we haven't decided the date.”
M-04, Rowan: “We agreed to keep the pilot at 12 participants.”
Supply the excerpt and use this request:
Use only the four labeled lines from Cedar planning, notes revision 1. Separate accepted actions, unassigned requests, proposals and reported decisions. For each row include source, item, owner and due date. Use “Not assigned” or “Not stated” when the source does not give a value. Do not turn the proposed pilot timing into a decision. Finish with the questions needed to make the action list usable. Draft only; do not create tasks or notify anyone.
Illustrative output, not a recorded Cue result:
On a narrow screen, scroll the table sideways to read all four columns.
| Source / type | Item | Owner | Due / status |
|---|---|---|---|
| M-01 · Accepted action | Send revised interview questions | Mina | 18 November; year inferred from the 2026 meeting date, confirm if ambiguous |
| M-02 · Unassigned request | Check onboarding error logs | Not assigned | Before the pilot; exact date not stated |
| M-03 · Proposal | Consider a pilot next week | Not assigned | Not stated; pilot date undecided |
| M-04 · Reported decision | Keep the pilot at 12 participants | Not assigned | No due date stated; Rowan reports agreement |
A useful follow-up asks: who accepts the log check, what date does “before the pilot” mean, and is the 12-participant decision correctly recorded? Keep a reported decision attributed to the source until the participants have checked it. A neatly filled owner column is not useful if the owners never accepted the work.
Turn the reviewed list into useful Agent context
Once the action list is checked, give an Agent the specific slice needed for the next task. You do not need to transfer every meeting or the whole project history to draft one follow-up.
Task: draft a request for an owner of the onboarding log check.
Source: Cedar planning, 16 November 2026, revision 1, M-02 and M-03.
Known: a log check was requested; nobody accepted it; the pilot date is undecided.
Unknown: owner and calendar deadline.
Output: one short message asking for an owner and proposing that a deadline be confirmed afterward.
Boundary: draft only, no notifications or tracker edits.
You can speak this instruction while working in your notes, then review Cue's answer next to the source. If you hand the brief to Claude Code, Codex or another tool, transfer the reviewed text explicitly. See the Agent and context handoff guide; a new Agent does not automatically receive another task's complete history.
For a longer recording, work through coherent sections first, using stable source labels. Keep a small list of decisions, accepted work and open questions from each section, then reconcile overlaps. Do not merge two similarly worded tasks solely because they share a keyword. Keep the person, scope and source attached until you confirm they refer to the same action.
When a later meeting changes a decision, retain both records with their dates. Ask for a change summary that says which source supersedes which earlier statement. “What changed since revision 1?” is more useful than repeatedly asking for a fresh summary that hides the decision history.
Verify the result before it becomes a plan
- Classification: M-03 remains a proposal, not a decision. M-02 remains a request, not an assignment to Rowan.
- Evidence: every row points to a real source line; no invented quote, timestamp or speaker appears.
- Missing data: unknown owners and dates stay visible. “Next week” is not silently turned into a calendar deadline.
- Coverage: all four statements are represented without creating duplicate tasks.
- Review: ask participants to confirm the decisions and accept assignments before copying them into the team's actual task system.
For the exercise, the output passes when it preserves the difference between agreement, an offer, a request and a suggestion. For real meetings, add your team's review step. A meeting summary is an aid to that review, not proof that everyone agreed.
Handle uncertainty before automating the next step
The transcript may have the wrong word or speaker
Return to the recording if you are allowed to access it, or ask the relevant participant. Until verified, mark the passage unclear and exclude it from confirmed decisions. Do not ask the Agent to make uncertain speech sound certain.
Two meetings disagree about the deadline
Provide both excerpts with dates and revision labels. Ask for a conflict list, not an arbitrary choice of the latest-looking number. Identify who can confirm which statement supersedes the other before editing a shared plan.
The source is too long or sensitive to share
Choose a smaller relevant excerpt and remove unrelated personal details. Keep a private source reference in your own system. Do not widen access or send the full recording to another service merely to work around an input limit.
Once the list is reviewed, use the voice follow-up email tutorial to turn one unresolved item into a clear request.
Try it with Cue
Use your configured shortcut and verify the active mode in Cue Settings. Available app context and actions depend on permissions, version and account. Read the privacy policy before providing confidential material; this guide does not promise all processing stays on your device.
Get Cue for your computer · Current plans
Need help or found an error? Contact Cue support or email eli@sophoninc.com. Include your Cue version, platform, mode and a redacted example. Do not send passwords, tokens or private meeting material.