Meeting-to-Action (Project C)

Meeting-to-Action is a small CLI tool that converts raw meeting notes (.md or .txt) into a clean, actionable checklist containing tasks, optional owners, and optional due dates.

V1 Scope

• One CLI command: parse
• Input: one .md/.txt file, or a directory of notes files
• Extraction of action items from bullets and sentences
• Optional extraction of owner and due date only when obvious
• Output: one markdown file with a standardized checklist format
• Basic terminal summary
• Unit tests for parser and formatter

Out of Scope (V1)

• Web UI
• Database
• Authentication/authorization
• Third-party integrations
• Audio transcription
• OCR/PDF parsing
• Multilingual support
• Advanced NLP confidence scoring
• Background jobs
• Cloud deployment

Requirements

• Python 3.11+

Installation

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

For the full local validation pass, install the dev extra:

pip install -e ".[dev]"

Usage

meet2action parse notes.md --out actions.md

To produce machine-readable JSON instead of markdown:

meet2action parse notes.md --format json --out actions.json

Without --out, the CLI writes beside the input:

meet2action parse notes.md
# writes notes_actions.md next to notes.md

meet2action parse notes.md --format json
# writes notes_actions.json next to notes.md

You can also batch-parse a directory of notes files:

meet2action parse ./notes
meet2action parse ./notes --recursive
meet2action parse ./notes --format json --out-dir ./parsed

Single-file input must be a local .md or .txt file.

Expected validation failures return a non-zero exit code and do not write an output file:

meet2action parse /tmp/missing.txt --out actions.md
# Error: input file does not exist: /tmp/missing.txt

meet2action parse notes.csv --out actions.md
# Error: input file must be .md or .txt

Validation

.venv/bin/pytest
.venv/bin/ruff check .
.venv/bin/python -m build
meet2action parse tests/fixtures/notes_sample.txt --out actions.md
meet2action parse tests/fixtures/notes_sample.txt --format json --out actions.json

python -m build uses an isolated build environment by default, so the build backend dependencies must be available locally or installable from the current environment.

Example Input

- Alice to draft kickoff agenda by 2099-01-15.
Please send vendor shortlist by Friday.
Bob will follow up with legal.
General discussion about roadmap.

Example Output

# Action Items

- [ ] Draft kickoff agenda (owner: Alice, due: 2099-01-15)
- [ ] Send vendor shortlist (due: Friday)
- [ ] Follow up with legal (owner: Bob)

With --format json:

{
  "total_lines": 4,
  "candidate_lines": 3,
  "actions": [
    { "task": "Draft kickoff agenda", "owner": "Alice", "due_date": "2099-01-15" },
    { "task": "Send vendor shortlist", "owner": null, "due_date": "Friday" },
    { "task": "Follow up with legal", "owner": "Bob", "due_date": null }
  ]
}

If no actionable lines are found, the CLI still writes a valid checklist file:

# Action Items

_No action items found._

Extraction rules (V1)

The parser uses deterministic, conservative rules:

• Action candidates are lines with clear action cues (for example: to, will, send, review, prepare, follow up).
• Owner is extracted only for obvious formats:
  • Alice to ...
  • Alice will ...
  • Alice: ...
  • @Alice ...
• Due date is extracted only for obvious formats:
  • by YYYY-MM-DD or due YYYY-MM-DD (must be a real calendar date)
  • by Monday or due Friday (weekday names)
• Discussion/status context lines (for example Discussion: or We will discuss ...) are intentionally ignored to reduce false positives.
• Generic context labels like Topic:, FYI:, and Background: are ignored unless they clearly match an obvious action-owner pattern.
• Leading Please is removed from task text when present as politeness.

Project Layout

meet2action/
├── src/meet2action/
│   ├── cli.py
│   ├── formatter.py
│   ├── models.py
│   └── parser.py
└── tests/
    ├── fixtures/notes_sample.txt
    ├── test_cli_helpers.py
    ├── test_e2e_parse.py
    ├── test_formatter.py
    └── test_parser.py