The prompt for session notes from a transcript: what to tell the AI, and what to leave to the eval

A prompt for session notes from a transcript should describe the section and check nothing. Four lines do the describing. Every must belongs in the eval instead, the only place a requirement can fail a section and send it back.

Ember Console, the session-report builder I build for coaches, is in closed beta.

The published prompts do both jobs at once. BYU’s meeting-transcript prompt reads: “Summarize this meeting transcript in a way that is concise, organized, and informative.”

Those last three words are tests. The sentence hands the AI something to write and something to grade in the same breath.

What goes in a box prompt for session notes?

A box prompt holds four lines, and all four describe rather than judge.

1. Name the reader: the client, or me.
2. Say what the section holds.
3. Point at the part of the transcript it draws on.
4. Give it a length.

A prompt posted in r/ChatGPT is line two on its own: the attendees, the talking points, the tasks and the next steps, and nothing about how well it is done.

The letterhead-and-sections half is in life coaching templates in Ember Console, and the lines above, written for a GROW section, are in GROW coaching model questions as box prompts. Each box of your template has a prompt and an eval housed inside Ember.

What belongs in the eval instead of the prompt?

The eval holds every must, and every adjective a section could fail on.

A must in the prompt has nothing behind it. An AI reworks each box until it passes the minimum standard you set, which is the box system, so the eval holds the sentence that can send a section back.

The Ember landing page puts it this way: “Get tailored AI output for every section of your template, while Ember learns from your edits and checks each result against your own criteria.”

Louis Corneloup’s AI Academy recap library already keeps the two apart: sixteen copy-paste prompts filed in four groups, one of them Quality and Edge Cases.

How to write an eval a box can fail is its own piece. The AI doing the writing is the one you already use, ChatGPT or Claude or Littlebird, and it gets every prompt and the eval system on each run.

What is not stated yet?

Three things about a box prompt I have not published.

1. Whether a prompt has a length limit.
2. Whether one box’s prompt can read another box.
3. Whether boxes arrive with default prompts, or start blank.

The first decides how much of this you can write, and the other two decide whether four lines stay four lines.

Read the prompt you keep in ChatGPT as two documents. The describing half is your box prompt, and every adjective you hoped it would enforce is the eval.

Questions people ask next?

What is a good prompt for meeting notes?

One that describes the output and leaves the judging to a separate check. BYU’s published prompt asks for a summary that is concise, organized and informative, and the last three of those words are a test. Keep the summary; move the test.

Can ChatGPT write notes from a transcript?

Yes. AI Academy’s library publishes sixteen copy-paste prompts for recaps, one of which turns a pasted transcript into a summary with decisions and owners. What ChatGPT alone does not do is check that summary against your own rule every session.

Does every section need its own prompt?

Each box of your template has a prompt and an eval housed inside, so yes. Whether a box starts with a default prompt, or whether one prompt can see another, I have not published.