LocalBridge

Day to day work template - 1 to 4 tabs

Thread summary prompt template

A chronological summary of a long thread is almost as long as the thread. What you actually need is the state it left things in.

The prompt

Summarise this discussion by outcome, not chronologically.

Give me:
- Decided: what was actually agreed, and by whom.
- Still open: questions raised and never resolved.
- Actions: who owes what, and by when if stated. Write "no owner named" where there is none.
- Changed position: anywhere someone's view shifted during the thread, and what shifted it.
- Tone check: is there unresolved disagreement someone reading only the last message would miss?

Rules:
- Do not summarise message by message.
- Attribute by name where names are given.
- If something was implied rather than agreed, put it under still open.
- Do not invent deadlines. Absence of a date is information.

Why this prompt is written this way

Sorting by outcome rather than chronology is the whole template. Chronological summaries preserve the length of the thread, which is the problem you were trying to solve.

The 'changed position' section catches the thing that is genuinely hard to see by scrolling, because it is spread across messages that are far apart.

The tone check exists because the last message in a thread often reads like agreement when it is actually someone giving up.

Getting more out of it

  • Include the linked document if the thread refers to one. Half of most threads is unreadable without it.
  • Ask for the actions section on its own if that is all you need. It is faster and less prone to padding.
  • Watch for 'no owner named'. It is usually the most actionable line in the output.
  • Never forward the summary without reading the messages it attributes decisions to.

Works best with

1 to 4 tabs open at once. Send them together rather than one at a time, so the assistant can compare them instead of forgetting the first by the time it reads the last. Sending tabs to Claude explains the options.

Common questions

Does this work on chat logs as well as email?
Yes. It works on anything with a sequence of messages and named participants. Chat logs benefit most, because their chronology is the least informative.
Is it safe to send a work thread to an AI assistant?
That depends on your employer's policy and the assistant's terms, and you should check both. Send only what the task needs, and leave out anything confidential you would not paste manually.
What if nobody actually decided anything?
Then 'decided' will be empty and 'still open' will be long, which is an accurate and useful description of that meeting.

Other templates

Stop pasting tabs one by one

LocalBridge sends the pages you have open into Claude or ChatGPT in one click, so this template gets the sources it needs.

See how it works