An AI summarizer for your recordings: seven formats, one tap

Why a format, rather than just “a summary”

A summary is only as useful as its shape, and the same hour has at least three useful shapes. Minutes that an absent colleague can act on are not the same document as a recap you paste into a chat, and neither is what you want from a lecture you have to sit an exam on.

Seven formats is Limemo’s answer: Brief, Executive, Key KPIs, Memo, Standard, Study and Custom. You pick one per note, and you can change your mind afterwards as many times as you want.

Custom is not a one-off field — it is a template you save. Give it a name and an icon, write up to 500 characters of instructions, and it joins the format list for every note from then on. List every decision with the person responsible. Only the parts about the pricing change. Bullet points, no prose, under 200 words. The instructions stay with the note you applied them to, so the next summary of that recording follows them too.

If you want the same shape every time, set it once: the format you choose can be saved as your default, and new notes arrive already written that way.

The summary comes from the transcript

The summary is written from the words of your recording and nothing else. It is not searching the web, and it has nothing else to draw on. Switching format does not re-record or re-transcribe anything — it rewrites from the same transcript, which is why reconsidering is cheap. What it does replace is the summary you had: edits, ticked action items and any translation go with it, so the order that saves you work is choose the format, then edit.

If a name came through wrong, two things fix it everywhere: rename the speakers, which applies across the whole note at once, and edit the summary directly before you send it on. The transcript itself is written once, when the recording is analysed, and stays as the record of what was said.

Two controls in the same sheet that do as much work as the template

Customize summary is not only the format list. Two settings sit above it, and either one changes the document more than switching between neighbouring templates does.

Length is a slider with five stops, marked Short, Medium and Long. It is the control to reach for when the format is right and the document is not: the same Executive summary at Short is the version you paste into a message, and at Long it is the one you send to somebody who missed the meeting.

Sections are two switches — Key KPIs and Action Items — and they are independent of the format. So a Standard summary with Action Items on is a different document from a Standard summary without them, and a meeting where nobody committed to anything does not get a half-empty list. Key KPIs is both a switch here and a template of its own: the switch adds the numbers to whatever format you picked, the template makes them the point of the document.

Both settings, and the format, can be saved as your default, so notes arrive the way you want them without opening this sheet at all.

Translation, and who it is really for

The summary can be translated on its own — the transcript stays in the language it was spoken in. That split is deliberate and it is the useful one: the record of what was said should not quietly become a translation of what was said, while the document you forward to somebody often has to be in their language.

Twelve languages are offered for the summary, with the recording’s own marked as the original. The latest translation is kept with the note, so switching between it and the original is instant; translating into another language replaces it. Transcription itself covers 99+ languages — the two numbers are different things, and which languages Limemo transcribes and translates keeps them apart properly.

Where the formats earn their keep

A meeting across a table, and a lecture. Those are the two the templates were built around.

For the meeting, the pattern is: record it, take the Executive summary, and send that. What arrives in someone’s inbox reads like minutes rather than like a transcript dump, and the decisions are at the top because that is what the format is for. In-person meetings goes through that from start to finish.

For the lecture, it is Study, and the value is at revision time rather than on the day. A fifty-minute recording becomes something with a structure you can actually work through, and the transcript stays underneath for the exact phrasing you need to quote. Recording lectures on iPhone has the week-by-week version.

And the honest note about picking: try two on the same recording, before you start editing either. That settles the question better than any description on this page.

What an Executive summary looks like

Executive on a fifty-minute supplier review, at Medium length. Two sections, in that order. The same transcript under Brief is one paragraph, and under Key KPIs it is the figures and nothing else.

Key Takeaways

• The team accepted the revised delivery schedule and moved the cut-over to 12 November.
• Operations will run one week with both systems live and report on the Monday after it ends.
• Finance asked who carries the cost of that extra week, and it was left open.
• The supplier agreed to hold the current unit terms until the end of the quarter.
• The next review is scheduled for 6 November at 2:00 PM.

Action Items

• Lena: Send the revised schedule to the operations leads.
• Marcus: Book the parallel week with both system owners.
• Ana: Put the open cost question on the agenda for the next review.