# Follow-up email

Turn rough notes or a meeting summary into a clear, friendly follow-up email, with a short recap, agreed actions with owners, and an obvious next step.

## Purpose

After a meeting or a call, the follow-up email is what keeps things moving. It reminds everyone what was agreed, makes the actions hard to forget, and gives people one clear thing to do next.

The trouble is that writing it well takes effort, and by the time you sit down to do it you have half-forgotten the details. So it gets put off, or sent as a wall of text nobody reads.

This skill takes your rough notes and turns them into a short, warm email that a busy person can read in twenty seconds and act on. You give it the raw material. It gives you a clean draft you can review and send.

## When to use

Use it when:

- You have just finished a meeting, call or workshop and need to follow up.
- You have notes, a transcript, or a meeting summary sitting in front of you.
- More than one person needs to know what was decided and who is doing what.

Skip it when the follow-up is a single line, like "Thanks, will send the file tomorrow". For that, just write the line. This is for follow-ups with a recap and two or more actions to track.

## Required inputs

You need to give the AI:

1. **Your notes or summary.** Rough is fine. Bullet points, a transcript, scrappy sentences, whatever you have.
2. **Who the email is going to.** Names, and roughly who they are (client, your team, a supplier).
3. **What was actually agreed.** The decisions and the actions. If you are not sure who owns an action, say so and the AI will leave a gap for you to fill.
4. **The tone you want.** Warm and casual, or more formal. If you do not say, it will aim for friendly and professional.

Optional but helpful: any deadline that was mentioned, and the next meeting date if there is one.

## Safety checks

A few things to watch before you trust the draft:

- **The AI can invent details.** If your notes are vague, it may guess a date, a name or a commitment that nobody actually made. Read the draft against your notes and delete anything you cannot personally vouch for.
- **Owners and deadlines are high stakes.** Getting these wrong damages trust. Check that every action has the right person against it and a date you actually agreed on.
- **Do not paste sensitive information you would not want copied.** Pricing, personal details, anything confidential. If you are unsure about your workplace rules on AI tools, check before pasting client or staff information.
- **You are the sender, so you are responsible.** The AI drafts. You decide what goes out under your name.

## Process

The AI should follow these steps:

1. Read the notes and identify what was discussed, what was decided, and what actions came out of it.
2. Write a short, friendly opening line that references the meeting (one sentence, no padding).
3. Write a brief recap: two to four bullet points covering the key decisions or topics. Keep it skimmable.
4. List the agreed actions as a clear table or bullet list, each with an owner and a due date. Where the owner or date is missing from the notes, insert a clear placeholder like [OWNER?] rather than guessing.
5. State the single most important next step in plain words, so the reader knows exactly what to do.
6. Close warmly and sign off.
7. Flag, in a short note below the draft, anything it had to assume or could not find in the notes, so you can check it.

## Copy-paste prompt

```
You are helping me write a follow-up email after a meeting. I am [YOUR NAME] and I want it to sound like me: warm, clear and human, not corporate.

Here are my rough notes from the meeting:
[PASTE YOUR NOTES, TRANSCRIPT OR SUMMARY HERE]

The email is going to: [WHO IT IS GOING TO, e.g. "my client Sarah at Acme, plus her colleague Tom"]

Tone I want: [e.g. "friendly and professional" / "warm and casual" / "more formal"]

Deadline or next meeting, if any: [OPTIONAL, e.g. "next catch-up is Thursday 19 June"]

Please write the email with:
- A short, friendly opening that references the meeting in one sentence.
- A recap of the key points as 2 to 4 bullet points, kept skimmable.
- The agreed actions as a clear list, each with an OWNER and a DUE DATE.
- One clear next step stated plainly.
- A warm sign-off from me.

Important rules:
- Do not invent any facts, dates, names or commitments that are not in my notes. If something is missing, leave a clear placeholder like [OWNER?] or [DATE?] for me to fill in. Do not guess.
- Keep it short. A busy person should be able to read it in about twenty seconds.
- Use plain Australian English. No jargon, no filler.

After the email, add a short section called "Check these" listing anything you had to assume or could not find in my notes.
```

## Expected output

You should get back:

- A complete email, ready to review, with a subject line, a short recap, an actions list with owners and dates, a clear next step and a warm sign-off.
- Placeholders where the notes were thin, so nothing is silently made up.
- A short "Check these" list pointing at anything you need to confirm before sending.

It will be a draft, not a finished send. Expect to spend a minute fixing a name, confirming a date, or adding the one detail only you remember.

## Review checklist

Before you hit send, check:

- [ ] Every fact in the email is something I actually agreed to or can stand behind.
- [ ] Every action has the right owner and a date we genuinely agreed on.
- [ ] No invented details, and no placeholders left in by accident, like [OWNER?].
- [ ] The recap is honest and does not overstate what was decided.
- [ ] The next step is clear enough that the reader knows exactly what to do.
- [ ] The tone sounds like me, not like a template.
- [ ] No sensitive information is in here that should not be.