Imagine searching for gold on a beach with just a spoon—slow, tedious, and overwhelming. Now, imagine using a gold pan: a simple but powerful tool that helps you sift through the sand, letting the water wash away everything unimportant and leaving only the gold behind. That’s the difference between a typical note-taking app and an AI agent that highlights what truly matters.
AI agents are software that independently process information, make decisions, and take actions—no human input required. The next frontier in AI, they’re helping businesses across industries to streamline their processes, boost efficiency, and foster innovation.
Just like a gold pan refines your search for treasure, AI agents refine the way we capture and process information. They’re making note-taking smarter and more efficient than ever. Here’s how.
The Benefits Of Notetaking With AI Agents
AI-powered notetaking apps have transformed meetings. Instead of spending your energy scribbling down a transcript—or hiring someone to do it—these tools allow attendees to focus fully on the conversation. The problem, though, is that lengthy transcripts often include a lot of irrelevant information. Imagine being in an hour-long meeting with a cross-functional team. Only a few minutes of the discussion are relevant to your role, but you still have to sift through pages of the transcript to find those points and then jog your memory to recall the next steps.
This is where an AI agent shines. It doesn’t just transcribe the meeting—it can prepare a concise summary and much more. Your notetaking agent can generate a list of key ideas and takeaways, create a separate document with action items, generate a timeline for the meeting, and point you to helpful resources. It can even draft your follow-up emails (in your voice). By handling all these meeting-adjacent tasks, your agent can free you to focus on the substance of the meeting and more meaningful activities like high-level strategizing. In short, an AI notetaking agent supercharges the productivity and value of meetings. Here are some tips for setting up yours.
Tips For Setting Up A Notetaking Agent
To filter out the noise and focus on the most relevant meeting notes, you first need to teach your AI agent what matters to you and the concepts to prioritize. For example, let’s say I’m a content creation expert—a hat that almost every entrepreneur must wear today. If a notetaking app generates a generic meeting summary, it won’t be helpful to me. I care about content ideas. So, I need to explain to my agent what constitutes a content idea and what to focus on during the meeting. My instructions might look like this: “You are an expert in a content agency, tasked with identifying new, original content ideas—not recycled or current ones. Once you process the meeting transcript, please pinpoint and categorize the content ideas into formats like long-form videos, social media posts, podcasts, etc.”
Next, you need to tell your agent what to do with the information it gathers. The major benefit of agents versus generative AI is their ability to take next steps independently. Leverage this power by instructing your agent exactly what to do next. For example, ask it to identify your action items and add them to your Notion task list, create separate documents for each content idea, or draft follow-up emails for various recipients. These items will be ready for you shortly after the meeting.
Finally, don’t forget to use generative AI tools to refine your agent’s setup. You can explain your goals to an LLM like Claude or ChatGPT and have it generate prompts for your agent. Or, draft your own prompts and ask the LLM to help refine them.
Final Thoughts
As CEO of Jotform, I’m always on the lookout for scalable automation solutions. While they may require an initial investment of time to set up, once they’re running, the benefits compound. Notetaking agents are one such solution. Building, training, and fine-tuning your agent takes time, but the payoff comes quickly—especially as your company grows and your meetings multiply. The productivity and efficiency of those meetings will skyrocket, all without the need to hire an assistant for notetaking, analysis, summarizing, and follow-ups.
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