You just walked out of a one-hour meeting. Roughly 9,000 words were spoken (at 150 words per minute), and you remember about three of them. Transcribing a meeting with AI means turning that audio into text in a few minutes, then asking an assistant to produce structured minutes: decisions made, action items, owners, deadlines. No technical skills required, and two of the methods below cost nothing.
This guide gives you four methods, from the most complete to the simplest, the exact prompt that separates a vague summary from minutes people can actually use, and the rules to know before you hit record (participant consent is not optional). Each method is laid out step by step, with its real limits: maximum length, quality in a six-person meeting, handling accents and industry jargon.
Method 1: do everything in the Skilzy AI Lab
The most complete approach is to chain transcription and minutes-writing inside a single environment, with credits already included, instead of juggling three subscriptions. That is the idea behind the AI Lab built into Skilzy: you get access to real AI tools straight from the platform, you learn the method while you use it, and you don't have to pay for a separate subscription at every step.
Here is how it works, in five steps:
- Record the meeting. A phone in the middle of the table is enough for six people in a normal room. For video calls, start your meeting tool's recording.
- Grab the audio file. Universal formats: MP3, M4A, WAV.
- Transcribe the audio into text. You get a raw block, punctuation far from perfect, with the occasional misheard word. That's normal, and it won't cause problems later.
- Apply the minutes prompt (the one in section 5 of this article). The assistant cleans things up, adds structure, and pulls out decisions and action items.
- Proofread and fix. Budget two to three minutes. You check the numbers, the proper nouns, and the deadlines: those are the three places where AI gets it wrong most often.
For a one-hour meeting, the whole thing lands around 10 to 15 minutes, versus 45 to 90 minutes of writing it by hand.
One thing worth knowing before you sign up: two state-recognized certifications are eligible for funding (RS7439 for AI-assisted content marketing, RS6792 for AI and sales) if you want to go further than meeting minutes.
The real value for a beginner isn't the tool: it's the method. Knowing how to phrase the request is 80% of the result. If you want a wider overview before choosing, start with our guide to learning AI as a beginner.
Method 2: the transcription already built into your phone (free)
Your phone can probably turn a voice recording into text, for free, without installing anything. It's the fastest option for a short meeting, and it would be dishonest not to mention it.
On iPhone (iOS 18 and later): open the Voice Memos app, record, then tap the transcription icon at the top of the recording. The text appears, and you can copy it and paste it into an AI assistant.
On Android: the Recorder app on Pixel phones transcribes live, even offline. On Samsung, the Voice Recorder app offers a speech-to-text mode. On other brands, open the Google Docs app, then Tools, then Voice typing.
What this method does well: it's free, instant, and in most cases the audio stays on the device.
Its limits, plainly stated:
- It doesn't tell speakers apart. You get one block of text with no idea who said what.
- Quality drops fast if several people talk at once or the room echoes.
- Past 30 or 40 minutes, the text becomes hard to use as is.
- It produces no minutes at all. You still need an AI assistant for the synthesis step.
Method 3: your video call tool's native transcription
If your meeting happens on Teams, Google Meet, or Zoom, transcription is already built in, and it labels speakers by name. That's an advantage the other methods don't have, because the tool already knows who is connected.
- Microsoft Teams: during the meeting, go to the More actions menu, then Start transcription. The text is timestamped and attributed to each participant, then archived with the meeting.
- Google Meet: transcripts are available depending on your organization's Google Workspace edition, and the document lands in the organizer's Drive.
- Zoom: audio transcription is enabled in the account settings, under cloud recording, on paid plans.
One thing to watch: these features depend on your work subscription and on what your IT admin has allowed. On a free account, they're often unavailable. Check before the meeting, not during it.
And once you have the transcript, the job isn't done. A one-hour Teams transcript easily runs 40,000 characters, unreadable as is. You still go through an AI assistant for the synthesis.
Method 4: specialized third-party tools
Dedicated transcription tools are the most accurate on long, multilingual meetings, but they add yet another subscription or require a technical setup.
Three families, depending on your profile:
Consumer web tools (Notta, Tactiq, Fireflies, Happy Scribe). You upload a file or plug them into your video calls. They separate speakers and often offer an automatic summary. Almost all of them have a free tier capped at a few minutes per month, then a monthly subscription. Heads up: your audio goes to their servers. Read where the data is hosted before you send a confidential meeting over.
Whisper, the open source model. Released under the MIT license, Whisper is publicly documented on GitHub and installs on your own computer. Free, no length limit, and the audio never leaves your machine. In exchange, you have to work in the terminal and accept processing times that depend on your hardware. It's the best option if confidentiality is non-negotiable and a command line doesn't scare you.
Assistants that connect to your calendar and join meetings on their own. Convenient, but a bot that shows up in a meeting nobody announced is a genuine consent problem. Avoid it without explicit agreement from the team.
Quick comparison of the four methods
| Method | Entry cost | Identifies speakers | Structured minutes | Level required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skilzy AI Lab | Monthly subscription | Via the prompt and your notes | Yes, with the method provided | Beginner |
| Phone (native) | Free | No | No | Beginner |
| Video call tool | Included depending on your work plan | Yes | Partial | Beginner |
| Third-party tool / Whisper | Limited free tier or self-install | Yes | Often | Intermediate |
The prompt that turns 9,000 words into readable minutes
Good minutes don't come from the transcription tool but from the prompt you write afterward: ask for a precise structure and named action items, never just summarize this meeting. Summarize produces a lukewarm paragraph nobody will read. Here's a template to copy and paste above your transcript:
You are writing the minutes of a meeting from the raw transcript below. The transcript contains speech recognition errors: fix them when the meaning is obvious, and flag uncertain passages in square brackets.
Produce exactly these five blocks:
- Context, 3 lines maximum (purpose of the meeting, identifiable participants).
- Decisions made: one bullet per decision, phrased in the past tense and affirmatively.
- Action items: a table with Action, Owner, Deadline. If the owner or deadline isn't stated in the transcript, write to be confirmed. Do not invent anything.
- Open questions: topics raised without a conclusion.
- Useful quotes: 3 short verbatim quotes maximum that are worth keeping as spoken.
Constraints: 400 words maximum in total, factual tone, no evaluative adjectives. Ignore off-topic digressions.
Transcript: [paste here]
Three tweaks that change the result:
- Give the list of participants and the industry jargon before the transcript. The AI will write GDPR instead of gee dee pee are, and get the proper nouns of your field right.
- Explicitly forbid invention. The instruction don't invent anything, write to be confirmed sharply reduces action items assigned to the wrong person.
- Split it up if the meeting runs over 90 minutes. Process the transcript in two or three chunks, then ask for a merge of the partial minutes.
Which assistant you pick matters less than the prompt, but it does matter a little. Our comparison of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini on their free plans breaks down which one handles long text best. And if you want to practice without spending anything, we've rounded up 15 free resources.
Before you hit record: consent and data
Recording a work meeting without telling the participants is illegal in France, whatever transcription method you use. Three habits are enough to stay on the right side of the rules.
Announce the recording and what it's for. One sentence at the start: I'm recording so I can write the minutes, and the audio will be deleted once they're approved. Is everyone okay with that? If someone says no, you take notes instead. Participants have to be informed before you start, and be able to object.
Limit how long you keep it. Keep the minutes, delete the audio and the raw transcript once the document is approved. Data minimization sits at the heart of the GDPR as the CNIL explains it: you keep only what's necessary, for only as long as necessary.
Be careful with sensitive meetings. One-on-ones, health data, salary information, confidential client files: in those cases, either stick to a local solution (phone in offline mode, Whisper on your own machine) or don't record at all. A free online service is not the right place for a performance review.
One last point people often forget: say that the minutes were written with AI help, and have someone who was in the room read them over. Minutes approved by a human commit their author, not the tool.
Key takeaways
Four methods, one principle: transcription is the easy part, the minutes come from the prompt. Start with whichever method fits your situation best, test it on a short, low-stakes meeting, then tune the prompt until you get a document your colleagues actually read.
