Markdown meeting notes template

A good Markdown meeting-notes template has six parts: a title with the date, a list of attendees, the agenda, the notes themselves, the decisions you reached, and action items written as a task list. That last part earns its keep. Action items become checkboxes you tick off after the meeting.

The point of a fixed structure is that you fill the same six parts every time instead of reinventing the layout, so the notes are still skimmable a week later, when someone needs to know what was decided and who owns what.

The template

Copy this, change the names, and you're done:

# Sync · Mobile app v2 · 2026-06-28
 
**Attendees:** Priya, Marcus, Dana, Leo (notes: Dana)
**Absent:** Sofia
 
## Agenda
1. Beta feedback from last week
2. App Store review timeline
3. Pricing for the paid tier
 
## Notes
- Beta testers flagged the onboarding as too long. Three screens
  is two too many.
- Marcus walked through the review checklist. We're missing the
  privacy nutrition label.
- Pricing: rough agreement on a single tier, no free trial. Leo
  to confirm the number with finance.
 
## Decisions
- Cut onboarding to one screen before submission.
- Ship at one price, no trial, revisit after launch.
 
## Action items
- [ ] Dana: rewrite onboarding copy for one screen (by Wed)
- [ ] Marcus: fill in the privacy nutrition label (by Fri)
- [ ] Leo: confirm the price with finance (by Mon)
- [ ] Priya: send the beta thank-you note (this week)

That's the whole thing. Six headings and a checklist.

Why each part is there

The title carries the date in YYYY-MM-DD form so your notes sort in order when you list them, and so "the sync" is never ambiguous a month later. Put the topic before the date if you run several kinds of meeting.

Attendees matter more than they look. Note who was there and who took the notes, so when a decision is questioned later you know who was in the room. The **bold** label keeps it scannable.

The agenda is a numbered list because order is the point: it's the plan for the time. The notes are bullets because order isn't the point there, capture is. Write loosely. Fragments are fine. Nobody grades the prose.

Decisions get their own heading on purpose. This is the part people read first the next day, and burying decisions inside the notes is how they get lost. Pull each one out as a flat statement.

Action items are a task list: a dash, a space, then [ ]. Lead each with an owner and end with a rough date. One person per line. If two people own a thing, it's two lines, because a checkbox you can't fully tick is a checkbox nobody ticks.

A lighter version

Not every meeting needs six headings. For a fast one-on-one or a standup, drop to three:

# 1:1 · Dana / Marcus · 2026-06-28
 
## Talked about
- Onboarding rewrite is in progress, on track for Wed.
- Marcus wants to pair on the App Store submission.
 
## Action items
- [ ] Marcus: book 30 min for the submission walkthrough
- [ ] Dana: share the onboarding draft before then

Keep the action items no matter how short the notes get. They're the part you come back to.

In Unmarked

The action items aren't decoration. In Read mode, those - [ ] lines render as real checkboxes, and they're clickable. Tick one when it's done and Unmarked writes the change straight back into the file, in place, with no separate save. Your notes become a live to-do list you actually close out, instead of a record you stop looking at.

The outline sidebar reads your headings, so Agenda, Notes, Decisions, and Action items each become a jump point. In a long set of notes you click "Decisions" and you're there. The status bar shows word count and reading time while you type. Write the notes live in Split mode if you like, with the source on one side and the rendered view on the other.

When the meeting's over and someone needs the notes in their inbox, export to PDF or Word, or copy as Rich Text and paste the formatted notes straight into Mail or Slack.