Turn a meeting recording into recap slides with a five-slide structure and a review checklist. Separate agreed decisions from proposals before sharing.
To turn a meeting recording into recap slides, choose one audience, extract the decisions with their context, and build five slides: context, decisions, actions, risks, and next checkpoint. Review every number, owner, and date against the source before sharing. This creates a new deck; it does not recover slides shown on a shared screen.
CoHear is an AI recording and transcription app for iPhone and Android. It can organize a phone recording or imported audio into notes and slide drafts. A generated draft still needs editing and source checks; it is not a guarantee of a finished presentation you can send to a client. Record and process conversations only with the required permission.
Pick the reader before you compress
The next reader determines which details belong in the recap. Before generating slides, write one sentence describing who will read the deck and what they need to decide or do. “Keep everyone informed” is too broad to guide editing when the discussion contains several competing priorities.
A project sponsor usually needs the decision, its reason, and the risk that could change the plan. The execution team needs accepted actions, dependencies, and unresolved responsibilities. A client needs agreed scope, relevant commitments, and the next checkpoint. These audiences can receive different recaps from the same authorized source without changing the underlying facts.
For example, a sponsor might see “Current onboarding flow retained while complaints are investigated.” The team might need the person drafting interview questions and the missing complaint examples. The client might only need confirmation that the current flow remains in place. Do not expose internal speculation or sensitive examples merely because they appeared in the recording.
Write a provisional title that answers the reader’s question, then select the material that supports it. Keep a working note for details you leave out. Removing a tangent is editing; removing a condition that changes the meaning of a promise is a factual change. Keep the condition even if the slide becomes less tidy.
The five-slide structure
Five slides provide a starting sequence for context, decisions, actions, risks, and the next checkpoint. Use the following ordered structure instead of reproducing the meeting agenda. An agenda describes how the discussion was planned; a recap explains what the reader should understand afterward.
- Context: state the problem discussed, why it matters now, and the scope of the conversation. Include the meeting date and a concise source description so that the reader can distinguish this recap from an older update.
- Decisions: state what was approved, rejected, or left undecided. Include the reason or constraint needed to interpret each choice. If no decision was made, say so instead of promoting a proposal into a conclusion.
- Actions: record accepted tasks with owners, stated dates, and dependencies. Mark missing fields as “Not stated” or “Needs confirmation.” Keep proposed work separate from commitments that people actually accepted.
- Risks and open questions: explain what could change the plan, what evidence is missing, and which unresolved question needs an answer. Distinguish a risk raised during discussion from a problem known to have occurred.
- Next checkpoint: explain what the group will review next and what needs confirmation before then. If a review date was not agreed, leave it open rather than inventing a reassuring calendar entry.
Each slide should have one clear message supported by a small number of relevant details. Longer quotes, competing interpretations, and source references can remain in working notes. A concise slide should still allow someone to check how you reached its conclusion.
Five is not a quota. A short conversation may need a one-page recap, and an unresolved discussion may need a question list before a deck. Omit an empty section or label it accurately rather than adding invented content to fill a layout. Start from a structured meeting record if the source is still a loose collection of notes.
Use the meeting notes template to organize the source
Keep proposals out of the decisions slide
A decisions slide should contain choices the conversation establishes, not suggestions that sound useful. Design polish can make an uncertain statement appear settled, so check the status of the claim before shortening it into a headline.
Consider this teaching example, not a customer recording. A team agrees to keep its current onboarding flow while investigating complaints. Leo says, “We could redesign the welcome screen.” Maya says, “I will draft interview questions after Support sends the complaint examples.” No launch date is agreed.
A defensible decisions slide says “Keep the current onboarding flow while investigating complaints.” Its actions slide assigns the question draft to Maya, records the dependency, and leaves the date unstated. The proposed welcome-screen redesign belongs under options or open questions. “Launch redesigned onboarding next Friday” would invent approval, delivery scope, and timing.
Check what happened later in the recording. A proposal may have been accepted, deferred, or withdrawn after the initial discussion. If the evidence conflicts, keep the question open and ask the appropriate participant to confirm. The recap should not silently resolve a disagreement that the meeting itself left unresolved.
A product demo can introduce a similar problem: describing a feature is not the same as agreeing to integrate it. The product demo case provides another example of organizing a conversation around the next practical decision.
Read the product demo to integration case
Generate a draft, then check the claims
Generate the draft only after deciding the audience and sorting the source material. CoHear can supply notes and slide drafts from phone recordings or imported audio; use those outputs as material for review. Product capabilities do not remove the need to verify the message you will send.
Work through the following checklist before exporting or forwarding the recap. Check claims against the source rather than against another generated summary, which may repeat the same mistake.
- Decision status: does each statement describe an agreed choice, a proposal, or an unresolved question?
- People: are names and speaker labels correct, and did the named person accept the work?
- Numbers: are amounts, units, ranges, and comparison periods preserved? Do not replace a range with its midpoint without explanation.
- Dates: was a date stated, and is a relative phrase such as “next week” interpreted using the correct meeting date?
- Conditions: are approvals, dependencies, and exceptions still visible after shortening the text?
- Sharing: does this audience have permission to receive the included material, and have unnecessary sensitive details been removed?
Keep a quote or timestamp in the working record when available, especially for important decisions or commitments. If you cannot locate support for a claim, remove it, label the uncertainty, or seek confirmation. Do not invent a reference merely because the deck looks more credible with one.
Ask a reviewer to read the draft without the recording. They should be able to distinguish confirmed facts from open questions and identify the next action. That checks clarity; checking the audio separately checks fidelity. Both matter before an external audience receives the slides.
Explore CoHear notes and slide-draft workflows
Generating recap vs recovering original slides
A recap deck is a new explanation of a conversation; recovering original slides is a different task involving the original presentation material. Audio alone does not contain the visual layout, chart labels, or exact wording that appeared on a shared screen. A generated deck cannot establish those missing details.
If your task is to recover the original material, request the source presentation, an authorized recording with the screen content, or an existing export from the presenter. Check access and sharing permissions before distributing it. Do not describe newly generated slides as the presenter’s original deck.
If your task is to brief someone who missed the meeting, the five-slide workflow is appropriate: retain the context, decisions, accepted actions, risks, and next checkpoint, then verify the claims. The related essay explains why an idea may need a different format after a conversation; this guide supplies the practical steps for creating that format.