If you’ve been hearing about AI tools lately and wondering whether they can help you automate meeting minutes, you’re not alone. A lot of clerks are asking the same question, especially the ones who feel stretched thin, juggling long meetings, complicated motions, and deadlines that never slow down. The good news is that tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT can help. They can take a huge transcript or recording from like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom, and turn it into a draft in a few minutes, which sounds like magic if you’ve ever typed up minutes late at night.

But here’s the honest version. ChatGPT is only helpful if you set it up the right way and add the right context. 

• It needs the agenda. 

• It needs the attendance. 

• It needs the recording and notes in the right order. 

• It needs very clear instructions and assigned tasks.

And even after it gives you a doc, you still have to double-check the motions, votes, language, and formatting. It’s faster than manual note-taking, but it’s not a clerk, and it doesn’t instinctively understand the rules you follow every day. 

Think of ChatGPT as basically that high-school job-shadow kid who shows up in a blazer and insists they totally understand municipal procedure after watching five minutes of a meeting. They’re fast, confident, and eager to help, but they have no idea how anything actually works. If you don’t supervise them and give crystal-clear instructions, you’re going to end up with a mess.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through the entire process in plain English, starting with what ChatGPT is, where to find it, and how to talk to it. Then we’ll go step by step through the exact AI-powered process clerks are using right now to create minutes with it. Every instruction, every prompt, and every click is spelled out. 

Once you see what goes into the DIY process, we’ll also show you how ClerkMinutes handles the same work in a much simpler, clerk-friendly way without the prompting, chunking, or formatting gymnastics. You can see both approaches side by side and decide what fits your comfort level and workload.

If you can use email, you can follow this guide. Let’s get started.

And since we’re talking about ChatGPT, we’ll share the obvious little irony upfront. Yes, we use AI to help write bits and pieces of this guide about ChatGPT. If it can explain itself this clearly, it might be able to help with your minutes, too. 😉