AI WORLD HQTurn a meeting transcript into a to-do list with owners and deadlines using Cohere
Paste your meeting transcript into Cohere's chat and get a clean list of who owns what by when — in about five minutes.
In short: Cohere can read a meeting transcript and pull out every action item, the person responsible, and the deadline — you just paste the text and ask. You need a Cohere account (free trial or paid plan) and your meeting transcript ready as plain text.
If your meetings end with a long transcript and a fuzzy sense of "someone should follow up on that," this guide is for you. In about five minutes you'll have a clean, assignable list of tasks — names and dates included — ready to drop into whatever project tool your team uses. One honest note up front: Cohere will write the list for you, but it can't actually open Asana or send email on your behalf. The final copy-paste into your task tool is still a 30-second step you do yourself.
💡 Tip: tap a step’s number when you finish it — a green tick appears and your browser remembers how far you got.
- A Cohere account at cohere.com — there is a free starting tier, and paid plans if you run a lot of transcripts through it. Sign in before you start so you don't hit a wall mid-task.
- A meeting transcript as plain text. Most meeting tools (Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Otter, Fireflies, Read.ai) have a "Copy transcript" or "Download" button. If you only have audio, you'll need to transcribe it first — that's a separate step.
- About 5 minutes for a typical 30–60 minute meeting.
Get your transcript into one clean block
Open your meeting tool and find the transcript. Look for a button labeled something like "Copy transcript," "Download," or three dots (⋯) next to the recording. Paste everything into a plain text file, a Notes app, or an email draft. Strip out timestamps and speaker labels if they're noisy, but keep them if they help you remember who said what — names are the hardest part for any AI to get right, so context helps.
You'll know it worked when the text reads as a continuous conversation with no audio markers, system messages, or "[inaudible]" notes left in.
Open Cohere's chat
Go to cohere.com and sign in, then look for the chat or playground option in your dashboard. You're looking for a screen with a large text box where you can type a message and send it. If you land on the API dashboard by mistake, look for a tab labeled "playground" — that's the same chat experience, just framed for developers. If Cohere shows you an assistant named Coral or similar, that's the right place too.
You'll know it worked when you see a blank chat box with a send button (often a paper-plane ⬆ or arrow icon) ready to receive your message.
Paste the transcript and ask for action items
Click into the chat box and paste your entire transcript. Then, on a new line, type your instruction. The clearest prompts name the format you want and the three fields you care about: task, owner, and deadline. Vague prompts get vague answers; specific prompts get specific lists.
Hit send and wait a few seconds. Cohere will return a numbered list, usually one task per line. You'll know it worked when you see tasks that mirror the commitments people actually made in the meeting — not a generic summary of the topic.
Ask for anything it missed
Read the list carefully. If owners or deadlines are missing on some tasks, send a short follow-up. This gives Cohere a second pass at the same text, now focused on the specific gap. If the first response was too long or skipped a topic, ask it to redo it with tighter rules. Don't be polite about it — be specific, the same way you would with a colleague.
You'll know it worked when every action item has a name attached and a date, or an honest "unclear" label rather than a guess.
Copy the final list into your task tool
Highlight Cohere's reply and copy it. Open whatever tool your team uses for tasks — Asana, Trello, ClickUp, Notion, a shared spreadsheet, even an email. Paste the list as the starting point for new tasks. Most task tools let you turn each line into its own card, ticket, or row.
You'll know it worked when each task lives as its own item, has an owner assigned, and shows a due date — not buried in a single paragraph.
Send it to attendees for a quick confirm
Before you treat the list as final, send it to the people who were in the meeting. A short message — "Here's what I captured as next steps, let me know if I missed anything" — catches misheard names and dates. This step is quick but it prevents the most common failure mode: a confident-looking task list that quietly misnames a person or invents a deadline nobody agreed to.
You'll know it worked when the team replies (or silently doesn't object) and you can lock the tasks into your shared system with confidence.
- Pasting a summary instead of the full transcript. The cleaner and shorter your input, the more you'll get a generic answer. Use the actual transcript — the model needs the raw conversation to spot who said yes to what.
- Asking for "a summary" instead of action items. A summary is what the meeting was about; action items are who owes what by when. Be explicit, as in Step 3 — those three words ("action items," "owner," "deadline") are the difference between a useful list and a vague recap.
- Skipping the confirm-with-attendees step. Even a great extract can mishear a name ("Marie / Maria") or invent a date that wasn't said. The 30-second confirmation message saves you from tasks going to the wrong person or landing on a phantom date.
Open your last meeting transcript, copy it into Cohere's chat, and paste the prompt from Step 3. Two minutes from now you'll have a first draft of your action items sitting on screen.
❓ Quick questions
How long does this take?
About 6 minutes — the guide has 6 steps, and you can tick each one off as you go.
Which tool do I need?
This guide uses Cohere Cohere — but the approach works very similarly in other AI assistants.
Do I need to prepare anything?
- A Cohere account at cohere.com — there is a free starting tier, and paid plans if you run a lot of transcripts through it. Sign in before you start so you don't hit a wall mid-task.
- A meeting transcript as plain text. Most meeting tools (Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Otter, Fireflies, Read.ai) have a "Copy transcript" or "Download" button. If you only have audio, you'll need to transcribe it first — that's a separate step.
- About 5 minutes for a typical 30–60 minute meeting.
What mistakes should I avoid?
- Pasting a summary instead of the full transcript. The cleaner and shorter your input, the more you'll get a generic answer. Use the actual transcript — the model needs the raw conversation to spot who said yes to what.
- Asking for "a summary" instead of action items. A summary is what the meeting was about; action items are who owes what by when. Be explicit, as in Step 3 — those three words ("action items," "owner," "deadline") are the difference between a useful list and a vague recap.
- Skipping the confirm-with-attendees step. Even a great extract can mishear a name ("Marie / Maria") or invent a date that wasn't said. The 30-second confirmation message saves you from tasks going to the wrong person or landing on a phantom date.
Keep reading
✦ Original step-by-step guide by AI World HQ's AI editorial team. Written in plain language, reviewed for accuracy.
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