Create AI Meeting Summaries and Action Items
Create Kalima AI summaries with key points, decisions and action items, switch between four views, regenerate results, share them, and export Markdown.
An AI summary turns a full transcript into a structured briefing you can read in seconds. It pulls together a short headline, the key takeaways, decisions, action items, the topics that came up, open questions, and who took part. Instead of scrubbing a long recording, you get the outcome at a glance and can copy or share just the parts that matter.
What's in a summary
Every summary is built from the same set of sections. The TLDR is a 2 to 4 sentence headline that captures the session's essence and main outcome. Key takeaways are the substantive insights and conclusions, written as full sentences you can learn from on their own. Decisions record resolved outcomes, with the rationale, owner, and impact when those were actually stated. Action items are concrete tasks, each with an owner, due date, and priority when the session made them clear. Topics form a discussion map of the threads that came up, each with key points and the speakers involved. Open questions collect the unresolved questions and follow-ups the AI found that still need an answer.
Kalima adapts the emphasis to the kind of session. A meeting highlights decisions and action items, while a lecture, podcast, or solo recording leans into ideas and takeaways instead of forcing decisions that were never made.
The summary also divides the session into chapters in speaking order, each with a short title. Chapters don't appear in the summary views. They show up on the audio player, where you can see the parts of the session in the seek bar and jump from chapter to chapter. See Chapters.
A participants list rounds out the briefing so you can see who was in the conversation. The summary is written in your account's display language, even when the transcript itself is in another language. See Language Settings to change it.
Summaries are faithful to the transcript only. Kalima will not invent decisions, owners, dates, numbers, names, or quotes, so the clearer things were said in the recording, the richer the summary. Quiet, mumbled, or overlapping speech produces a thinner result.
Automatic summaries
Kalima automatically starts a summary after a recording ends when the session is at least 5 minutes long and contains enough speech, about 300 spoken words. Automatic summaries are enabled by default and use one item from your weekly summary allowance only after the result is saved successfully.
You can turn this off under Settings > Transcription > Summarize longer sessions automatically. An organization admin can also disable automatic summaries for organization sessions. This policy does not remove the manual Generate action.
Automatic generation waits while audio uploads or transcript recovery are still in progress. Shorter sessions can still be summarized manually as soon as they contain transcript text.
Generating a summary manually
You can generate a summary manually from the Studio once a session has transcript text.
A finished summary is saved to the session automatically, even if you close the panel or switch tabs mid-generation, so it's waiting for you when you reopen the session later. There's nothing to remember to save.
Summaries work best when important names and terms were captured clearly. Add them as session context before recording, and review speaker assignments before generating.
The four views
Switching views never re-runs the AI. The same generated summary is simply rendered four different ways, so you can move between them instantly.
| View | What you see | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | A metric dashboard plus the TLDR headline | A quick glance at the whole session |
| Tasks | The action items, organized by priority | Tracking follow-ups after a meeting |
| Topics | A detailed discussion map with key points per thread | Briefing yourself on each part of a talk |
| Markdown | Plain, copy-friendly text | Pasting notes into another document |
Action items in the Tasks view are display-only. They're a clear list to act on, not trackable to-do items inside Kalima. Copy them into your task tracker or share them as notes.
Regenerating and keeping summaries current
Saved summaries are stamped with the transcript they came from, so Kalima knows when your transcript has changed since. If you edit the transcript by fixing words, removing filler, or adding a later recording, your saved summary may be out of date until you regenerate.
Each generation counts against your weekly AI summary allowance, and that includes every regenerate. Generate once your transcript is reasonably clean to make the most of your quota. See AI Usage & Limits for the per-plan numbers.
Summary quality on higher plans
Summaries come in two quality levels, and the better one is chosen for you automatically. Standard quality is available on all plans, while enhanced, higher-quality summaries are produced on Pro, Team, and Enterprise.
On plans entitled to enhanced AI, summaries are produced by a materially stronger model, so high-stakes meetings get a more faithful, detailed briefing. There's no setting to toggle. You simply generate as usual and the right model is selected based on your plan and the length of the transcript. Very long sessions keep a fast model so a summary never becomes slow to produce.
You can't manually pick the summary model. Enhanced quality is tied to the plan entitlement, not a separate purchase. Compare what each plan includes on the Plans & Pricing page.
Sharing a summary with viewers
When you share a session, the people you grant access to can read its summary too. Viewers get a read-only summary panel, so they can read every section but cannot regenerate or change it. That keeps your briefing consistent for everyone you've shared it with.
Pair this with AI Chat and viewers can also ask their own questions about the same transcript, each with their own private chat history. See Sharing a Session and Live Viewer Mode for the ways to give people access.
Exporting a summary
The Markdown view is built for copying and pasting elsewhere, whether that's meeting notes into a doc, a recap into chat, or a briefing into email. Use the Copy button on the Markdown view to grab the full text in one click. For other formats and ways to export the transcript itself, see Exporting Transcripts.
Frequently asked questions
As soon as the session has transcript text. Record or upload audio and let it transcribe first; if there's nothing to summarize yet, Kalima will tell you.
In your account's display language, even if the conversation was in another language. Change it under Language Settings.
No. The summary is instructed to stay faithful to the transcript and never invent decisions, owners, dates, numbers, names, or quotes. If something wasn't said clearly, it won't appear as a confident fact.
Yes. Every summary generation, including a regenerate, counts against your weekly AI summary allowance. This is different from automatic session titles, which run when a recording ends and are free on every plan.
You probably edited the transcript after the summary was generated. Saved summaries are stamped to the transcript they came from, so just click Regenerate to refresh it.
Chapters are created together with the summary, so a summary written before chapters were introduced has none. Click Regenerate to add them. Very short sessions get no chapters, since a few minutes of conversation rarely divide into parts.
If a summary produces nothing for about 30 seconds, Kalima automatically stops it rather than leaving you with a frozen spinner. Click Regenerate to try again.
All AI features share a short-term rate limit. If you fire several AI actions in quick succession, wait a few seconds and try again. See AI Feature Issues for more.