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Every meeting has two costs. The first is obvious — the hour times the number of attendees. The second is invisible and larger: the cost of every person who needed to know what got decided but didn’t. That second cost shows up in specific ways. An exec reacts late to a decision they would have weighed in on. A partner gets surprised by a launch they could have helped with. A customer feels forgotten between calls. An engineer rebuilds something a different team deprecated last quarter. Each is small in isolation. Across a year, the difference between an org that operates coherently and one that operates in silos is mostly the difference between these gaps being filled and these gaps being normal. The problem isn’t the meetings. It’s the gap between the meeting ending and the right people outside the room finding out what happened. This workflow closes that gap. This guide is a specific instance of the workflows pattern. It pairs with every other workflow — the summary is the communication layer on top of structured meeting notes, customer research, and action items.
After a meeting already covers which built-in template maps to which audience (Slack Update Post Generator, Executive Summary, Email Update Generator, etc.). This guide is the systematic version: saved custom templates with stronger constraints, a 90-second cleanup discipline, and the operating habits that make it stick.

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What the artifacts look like

The same meeting — a launch-readiness sync — produces different summaries for different readers. Two of the three audiences, from one transcript: Slack post to the team channel:
Executive readout (email or exec channel):
Same transcript. Same hour of work. Two artifacts shaped for two readers. The third — an external customer follow-up — uses a different tone; the short version is below, and the email follow-up workflow is the full treatment.

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The templates

Three audiences cover most of what teams ship. The built-in Slack Update Post Generator, Executive Summary, and Email Update Generator (see the library) are the starting points. The custom versions below are what to tune toward — more opinionated structure, explicit no-emoji constraint, headline discipline.

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Internal team summary (Slack)

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Executive readout (email or exec channel)

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External customer follow-up email

Three things in these templates are load-bearing across all of them. The headline rule. Reading rate on Slack and email is mostly determined by line one. “We had our weekly sync” is not a headline. “Decision to delay launch by two weeks” is. The template requires it, bolded, on top. The 90-second cleanup is mostly about confirming this line earns its position. The no-emoji constraint, repeated explicitly. Most teams running this workflow want summaries without emojis — they read as more professional and age better in archives. The model will slip emojis in unless the constraint is in the prompt. State it. Re-check after generation. “Do not invent commitments or warmth.” Specifically for the external follow-up. The model will occasionally embellish what a customer said into commitments they didn’t make. Customer follow-ups that misrepresent the customer destroy trust faster than late follow-ups do. The cleanup step is what catches this.

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Save them as workspace templates

1

Pick the audience you summarize most often

For most teams that’s the internal Slack post. For sales, it’s the external customer follow-up. Start with one — add the others as they earn their place.
2

Run the closest built-in template on a real meeting

Slack Update Post Generator, Executive Summary, or Email Update Generator — whichever matches. See the template library.
3

Tighten the prompt in the Composer

Open the artifact in fullscreen. In the Composer, add the explicit constraints from the template above — headline rule, no-emoji, length cap, the “do not invent” instruction for external. Iterate until the output ships without manual rewriting.
4

Save with Workspace visibility

Open the Composer menu and choose Save as template. Set visibility to Workspace so everyone produces the same shape. See Custom templates for permissions.
One meeting can have multiple summary tasks. If the same call needs both a Slack post and an exec readout, attach both templates — Earmark generates each from the same transcript. These are two separate communication artifacts, not one.

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Run it on a single meeting

1

Pre-seed the meeting with the right summary template(s)

Pick the audience before the call and attach the matching template. If two audiences need it, attach two. See Before a meeting.
2

State outcomes out loud during the call

“So we’ve decided X.” “This will affect the platform team.” The headline writes itself when the meeting names its own outcome. Good meeting hygiene regardless.
3

The 90-second cleanup

Within the hour, before the day rolls on:
  • Confirm the headline. Is it the most important thing in the meeting? If not, promote whichever line is. Single highest-impact part of the cleanup.
  • Cut anything you would not want to leak. Internal disagreements, half-formed thoughts, sensitive context. The summary is functionally public within its audience — write it that way.
  • Check tone against the audience. A tone that works in a casual team channel reads differently in a formal exec email.
  • For external summaries, verify quotes and commitments. The model can embellish. Reading once for accuracy is not optional.
  • Strip emojis if the model slipped any in against the constraint.
4

Post or send the same day

Ideally within two hours of the meeting ending. The value of a meeting summary degrades by the hour — a summary that lands the next morning is worth meaningfully less than one that lands the same afternoon. This is the part of the workflow most people compromise on and most regret compromising on.

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Channel and audience match

Different channels have different norms. A short, conversational note dropped into a formal customer email reads as careless; a three-paragraph memo dropped into Slack does not get read. The pairings most teams use: A summary in the wrong channel is wasted. Match deliberately.

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Weekly digests across meetings

A weekly cross-meeting digest — “everything the team decided, shipped, and is working on this week” rolled up from five separate meetings — is the natural next thing readers ask for. That’s a question for Chat, not a new template.
  • Ask for the rollup. “Give me a recap of my meetings this week” or “What did the platform team decide this week, and who owns what?” Chat reads across your meetings and cites each one with a source chip. Hover a chip to check the excerpt before you repeat a decision to a wider audience.
  • Check the Coverage line. Every answer about your meetings ends with a Coverage line: the dates searched and how many meetings were reviewed. If the week had six team meetings and Coverage says four, the digest has a hole.
  • Scope it with a project. If the digest is for one team or initiative, put those meetings in a project and ask from the project page. Chat stays on that project’s meetings, including ones teammates shared. Write the digest rules into the project’s Instructions once (headline first, no emojis, decisions and owners only) and every digest you ask for there follows them.
  • Hold it to the same bar. The headline rule, the no-emoji constraint, and the 90-second cleanup apply to a Chat answer the same way they apply to an artifact.
To share the answer, hover over it:
  • Copy keeps the lists and formatting and drops the source chips, so it pastes cleanly into Slack or email. For answers with tables, choose Copy for chat for Slack and Teams, or Copy for documents for Docs and Word.
  • Copy as image captures the response, including its visible research steps and source chips, with your name and the available meeting context. It leaves out your question.
If you’d rather assemble it by hand, you already have the pieces: a week of this workflow on every team meeting is five Slack-postable summaries. Paste their headlines and key bullets into a sixth document, tighten, post. And if you want to run your own analysis, export local transcript files and point an external agent at them. Per-meeting summaries done well are still most of the value. The weekly digest is a layer on top.

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Common pitfalls

  • Skipping the 90-second cleanup. The model can promote a minor point to the headline, smooth over disagreement, or invent warmth. Without the review, the summary ships with errors that quietly erode trust.
  • Posting the full meeting notes instead of a summary. Different artifacts. Channels designed for summaries collapse under the weight of full notes; readers mute; the workflow dies.
  • Wrong audience, wrong channel. A formal exec summary in a casual team channel reads as cold. A casual recap in an external customer email reads as careless. Audience and channel are coupled — match deliberately.
  • Weak headlines. Line one is most of whether the summary gets read. Promote the real outcome to the top during cleanup.
  • Inventing commitments or warmth. Especially in external follow-ups. Read every external send for accuracy before clicking send.
  • Leaving emojis in. The constraint is real. Default no-emoji; restore them deliberately if you want them in a particular channel.
  • One summary for multiple audiences. A summary for the team is not the summary for leadership is not the summary for the customer. If two audiences need it, generate two — Earmark produces each in seconds from the same transcript.
  • Letting sensitive content ship. Run the “would I be okay if this leaked outside the intended audience?” test on every summary before sending. The cost of a careless line is much higher than the cost of cutting it.
  • Sending late. A summary the morning after lands at maybe a third of the value of one sent the same afternoon. Same-day, or it does not matter.
  • Treating the summary as the durable record. It is not — the Earmark artifact is. The summary is the communication layer that points back. Don’t ask it to do both jobs.

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Where to go next