Meeting follow-up and action items from any call transcript

The hour after a meeting decides whether anything happens. Barside’s Meeting follow-through turns a call transcript into meeting follow-up and action items: a short summary, the decisions with the exact words that settled them, proposed tasks with owners and deadlines, and a recap message you can edit. You check every item before anything is saved, and Barside never sends the recap for you.

It runs in Barside, a free desktop app for Windows, Linux and Mac, with the AI you connect in Settings → AI. Your transcripts stay in your notes on your computer.

What you get from a transcript

Choose a transcript and press Analyze meeting. Barside shows four parts:

• Meeting summary: a brief, factual summary of the call.
• Decisions: each decision with the transcript quote that supports it.
• Proposed tasks: each action item with its Owner, the deadline words people used (“by Thursday”), and the quote it came from.
• Follow-up draft: a recap with the decisions, the actions, their owners and the deadlines that were said out loud. The AI is told to leave out invented recipients, signatures and dates.

Where the transcript comes from

Meeting follow-through works on any note that holds a transcript or meeting notes. There are four easy ways to get one:

1. Transcribe a call. Choose Transcribe a call on the desktop bar or in the assistant, or type call in the search bar, then press Start recording. Barside records your microphone and your computer’s audio and adds the words to a note every 30 seconds, labelled You and Others, with Whisper on your computer. See transcribe calls on your computer.
2. Meet in Barside. Free video meetings for up to 6 people have live captions written on each person’s own computer. When a host turns captions on, the meeting note Barside saves at the end holds who came, the transcript and the chat.
3. Paste a transcript. Copy a transcript from another meeting app into a note.
4. Import one. Settings → Import notes brings in Granola meetings, each as a note with its attendees, summary and transcript. See import notes from other apps.

Always tell people before you record a call. Computer audio works on Windows, on Linux (PulseAudio or PipeWire) and, in Barside for Mac, on macOS 14.2 or later.

How to turn a transcript into meeting follow-up and action items

1. Open the transcript note and click the Meeting follow-through button next to its title. Or open Library & briefing and choose the Meeting follow-through tab.
2. Pick the note under Transcript note and press Analyze meeting. Long calls are read in parts (“Reading meeting · part 1 / 3”), then Barside drafts the follow-up. Stop cancels at any time.
3. Read the Meeting summary and the Decisions. Each decision shows its quote, so checking it takes seconds.
4. Under Proposed tasks, tick Keep this task for each action item you want, or press Select all tasks. Fix the Task text and the Owner where needed.
5. Choose a Reminder time for tasks that need an alarm. Leave it blank to save a task without one. Times use your computer’s time zone.
6. Edit the Follow-up draft until it sounds like you.
7. Press Save recap + N selected tasks.

Barside then creates a note called “Recap ·” followed by the meeting’s title, with the summary, the decisions and the draft marked “not sent”. Each kept task becomes its own note with its owner, the meeting it came from and the transcript quote, plus a reminder if you chose a time. To send the recap, copy the draft into your email app. Open saved recap takes you straight to it.

Built so action items are never made up

An AI can sound sure about things nobody said. Meeting follow-through checks the AI’s work against the transcript before you see it:

• Every decision and task needs a quote that appears in the transcript. Anything without one is dropped.
• Owners must be named. If the owner’s name is not in the transcript, the task says Unassigned.
• Deadlines stay in people’s words. “By Thursday” is shown as it was said, and no reminder is set unless you choose a time.
• Questions are not decisions. The AI is told not to turn a question into a decision, and not to invent commitments, owners, dates or quotes.
• Nothing is sent. The recap is saved as a note. No email or message leaves Barside.
• No double saves. Pressing save again does not make duplicate tasks. If the transcript changes after the analysis, Barside asks you to analyze it again.

The AI is asked for at most 12 decisions and 12 tasks per part of a long call, and a task or decision that repeats with the same wording or quote is kept once. The review is saved with the note, so it is still there when you come back, and Barside asks the AI again only after the transcript has changed.

Let the meeting agent follow up after every call

If you want the follow-up waiting for you, turn on the meeting agent. Open Agents & approvals, choose the Meeting tab and tick After each call transcript, prepare a follow-up. It is off by default. From then on, when a call transcription finishes or a Barside meeting ends with a transcript, the agent runs the same analysis and puts its proposals in your approval inbox:

• Add tasks to the transcript note as a Follow-up checklist, which also shows on the task board with any due dates.
• Remind me for up to six tasks with a clear deadline. When people named only a day, like “by Friday”, the reminder is set for 9:00 AM that day. “End of day” becomes 5:00 PM, “afternoon” 2:00 PM and “tonight” 6:00 PM. A deadline that is unclear or already past gets no reminder, and you can change any time before you approve.
• Email the recap, which opens your email app with “Recap:” and the meeting title as the subject and the draft as the body. Add the recipients there or on the card. Barside never sends it.

You can also run it on any note: choose it under Run on a note and press Prepare follow-up, or open the note and pick Prepare follow-up for this note in the search bar. Read more about AI agents that ask before they act.

After you save: commitments and decisions

Saved tasks do not vanish into a note. Each one is an open commitment, listed in the daily briefing under Unfinished commitments with its owner and reminder, until you press Mark complete, which also clears its reminder. Reminders you approve from the meeting agent count as commitments too. The meeting’s decisions stay under Recent decisions for 14 days, each with its quote, as long as the transcript note stays unchanged, so last week’s agreements are one click away.

Examples

• A sales rep transcribes a discovery call, keeps three tasks with reminders, and sends the recap with next steps and owners from her own email app.
• A product team holds its weekly sync as a Barside meeting with captions on. The meeting agent proposes a Follow-up checklist and a reminder for “the pricing copy by Thursday”, and the lead approves both.
• A consultant pastes a transcript from a client’s meeting tool into a note, saves the tasks, and tracks them in the daily briefing until each one is marked complete.
• A manager keeps one note per one-on-one, runs follow-through after each, and checks Recent decisions before the next conversation.

Using Claude or ChatGPT instead

If you already work in Claude Desktop, ChatGPT or another MCP app, connect it to Barside through AI connections and pick the Meeting follow-up prompt. Your AI app finds the meeting note, lists the decisions and action items with owners and dates, and offers to add them as tasks. The prompt tells it to ask you before it adds anything, and it can add tasks only if its connection has permission to add. The connection reaches only the workspaces you share with it.

Privacy

• The analysis sends the transcript text to the AI company you connected in Settings → AI, whose data policy applies. Audio stays on your computer, where speech is turned into text.
• Notes excluded from Library AI cannot be analyzed. Barside asks you to change their Sources setting first.
• The review, the recap and the task notes are saved in your library and its ZIP backups. Nothing is emailed or posted.

Read how Library and meeting analysis use your data and how recordings and transcripts work.

How it compares

Barside keeps transcripts in your notes on your computer, checks every action item against the transcript, and uses the AI account you choose. It adds no bot to your calls: transcription records your own microphone and computer audio. If you are comparing tools, read the Granola alternative and Otter.ai alternative guides, or the lists of the best AI meeting assistants and best transcription apps. Barside runs on Windows 10 and 11, on Linux and on Mac.

Works well with