Most meetings end with everyone nodding and nobody knowing who does what. An action item that gets done has one owner, one verb and one date. The rest of this page is how to get there, with an example you can check against the tool.
"Marketing will look at it" is owned by nobody. Name one person. If two people share a job, write two items, each with an owner, so each can be ticked off separately.
"Safari toggle" is a topic. "Fix the Safari toggle" is a task: the reader can tell when it is finished.
"By Friday" means a different day depending on when someone reads the notes. Resolve it against the meeting date: said on Monday 2026-10-19, "by Friday" is 2026-10-23, and "next Friday" is 2026-10-30.
A decision ("keep the free tier through December") needs no follow-up. An open question ("who owns the refund wording?") is an action item waiting for an owner. Mixing them hides the second kind.
Raw notes from a Monday sync (meeting date 2026-10-19):
Ben: I'll fix the Safari toggle by Wednesday. Ana: We decided to keep the free tier through December. Cleo will book the venue for the offsite next Friday. We need to update the onboarding checklist before the webinar. Q: Who owns the refund policy wording?
| Owner | Action | Due |
|---|---|---|
| Ben | Fix the Safari toggle | 2026-10-21 |
| Cleo | Book the venue for the offsite | 2026-10-30 |
| needs an owner | Update the onboarding checklist before the webinar | none given |
Decision: keep the free tier through December. Open question: who owns the refund policy wording? Notice what the tool did not do: it did not guess an owner for the checklist, because nobody was named. That item is the one most likely to be forgotten, so it is flagged rather than filled in.
Group the list by person and email it before anyone forgets the meeting. Paste your notes into the free tool to get that email, a CSV and calendar entries. Nothing is uploaded.