Summaries you can check
Ask questions, not just for a summary
"Summarise this" gets a smooth paragraph that may skip the bit that matters to you. Better: "What does this contract say about termination and notice periods? Quote the clause." or "What changed from the previous version?" Specific questions with quoted passages give you something to check against the original in seconds.
Long documents still have blind spots
Modern assistants can take in hundreds of pages, but they don't give every page equal attention. Details buried in the middle, tables and footnotes are the usual casualties. For anything important, ask where in the document each point comes from, and open that page. Our Long-Context Document Interrogator prompt sets this up.
Meeting notes and recordings
Teams, Zoom, Google Meet and most assistants can transcribe calls and produce notes. Tell people at the start that the meeting is being recorded or transcribed, and follow your employer's rules; in many places recording without notice is unlawful or against policy. Transcripts mishear names and numbers, so check those before circulating.
From notes to actions
The most useful meeting output is a short list: decisions made, actions with an owner and a date, and open questions. Ask for exactly that format. Then have a person who was in the room check it before it goes round, because an AI will happily assign an action to someone who never agreed to it.
When did you last act on a summary of something you hadn't read yourself? How would you have known if it left out the important part?