Why this matters
Managers, NGO officers and business owners are busy. Someone who can read a long report, contract or set of meeting notes and return a clear, accurate summary saves them hours. Research assistants, virtual assistants and project officers do this every week. AI makes summarising much faster, but a summary that leaves out the key risk or adds a point that was never there is worse than none.
Asking for the right summary
"Summarise this" gets a generic result. Say what kind of summary you need:
- Key points: "List the five most important points in plain English."
- Decisions and actions: "List every decision made and every action, with who is responsible and the deadline."
- For a reader: "Summarise this for a busy director in under 100 words" or "for community members who did not attend".
- Questions: "What questions should a manager ask after reading this?"
Paste the actual text, or upload the file if your tool allows it and the content is not confidential. Long documents may be too big for a free plan; split them into parts and summarise each.
Checking a summary
The danger with summaries is what is missing and what was added. After you get one: