# What's in an AI summary?

> Every section of Canto's generated notes explained: overview, sections, decisions, action items, open questions, and when the Agenda check appears.

Updated: 2026-08-16 · Canonical: https://usecanto.com/help/ai/summaries/

Once a recording is transcribed, Canto writes structured notes for it: a short overview, topic sections with timestamps, decisions, action items, and open questions, plus a generated title. Every claim in the notes is grounded in the transcript — if it wasn't said, it isn't in the notes.

## What sections do the notes include?

- **Overview** — a one-to-two-sentence TL;DR of what was discussed and decided.
- **Notes** — anything you typed yourself, during or after the recording. The AI treats your notes as the priority outline: it keeps your headings and terminology and expands on the points you cared about.
- **Agenda check** — a short critique of how well the conversation followed its agenda. This section only appears under a specific condition — see below.
- **Topic sections** — the body of the notes, one section per major topic, with dense bullets and timestamps that link back to the transcript.
- **Decisions** — decisions that were actually made, not proposals. Empty meetings show none.
- **Open questions** — questions raised but left unanswered.
- **Action items** — every commitment with an owner and due date where one was mentioned, as a shared checklist. See [Track action items across meetings](https://usecanto.com/help/ai/action-items/).

The notes scale to the content: a five-minute voice memo gets one or two sections, a dense hour-long meeting gets many. Alongside the notes, Canto generates a title and tags for the recording.

## When does the Agenda check appear?

Only when there was an agenda to check against: the calendar event linked to the recording has a description (that's where meeting agendas live), or your own typed notes contain an agenda. Without either, the section is omitted entirely — that's expected, not a failure. When it does run, it says which agenda items were covered, which were skipped or only touched, and what off-agenda topics took the time instead. The Agenda check renders on the web and in exports.

## What language are the notes written in?

Notes, titles, and tags are written in your app language — the one you picked in settings — regardless of what language was spoken in the recording. Transcription itself stays auto-detect. See [Change your language](https://usecanto.com/help/account/change-language/).

## Can I change what the AI wrote?

Yes. The summary is editable markdown, individual action items can be edited, and clearing your edits reverts to the generated version. See [Edit or regenerate a summary and title](https://usecanto.com/help/ai/edit-regenerate-summary/).

## Troubleshooting

### The notes say "Preparing AI"

Summarization starts right after transcription finishes and usually takes under a minute. If the status changes to **AI failed — retry**, tap it to run the AI pass again.

### The notes seem thin

Short or quiet recordings produce short notes — Canto doesn't pad. If the transcript itself is wrong or empty, fix that first: see [Why is my transcript empty or wrong?](https://usecanto.com/help/transcription/how-transcription-works/)

Related articles:

- [Track action items across meetings](https://usecanto.com/help/ai/action-items/)
- [Edit or regenerate a summary and title](https://usecanto.com/help/ai/edit-regenerate-summary/)
- [Turn a meeting into minutes or an email](https://usecanto.com/help/ai/views-templates/)
- [How does transcription work in Canto?](https://usecanto.com/help/transcription/how-transcription-works/)