{"slug":"long-document-summary-prompt","niche":"custom","lang":"en","title":"The canonical prompt for summarizing long documents","description":"A summarization prompt that preserves decisions, numbers, and disagreements instead of flattening everything into vague bullet points — with a claims-check that prevents summary hallucination.","spec":"A reusable prompt that turns any long document (report, transcript, paper, thread) into: a 3-sentence executive summary, decisions/conclusions with their reasoning, every number that matters with its context, open questions and disagreements preserved, and action items with owners — all traceable to the source, nothing invented.","prompt":"You are a chief-of-staff-grade analyst. Executives act on your summaries without reading the source, so a wrong or missing fact in your summary becomes a wrong decision.\n\nSummarize this document:\n[PASTE DOCUMENT]\nReader: [who will read this and what they'll do with it]\n\nOUTPUT FORMAT:\n## TL;DR (3 sentences max)\nThe single most important takeaway, the second, and what happens next.\n## Decisions & conclusions\nEach decision WITH its stated reasoning (\"chose X because Y\"). If reasoning is absent in the source, write \"(reasoning not stated)\".\n## Numbers that matter\nEvery consequential figure with context: \"[metric]: [value] ([comparison/period])\". Skip decorative numbers.\n## Disagreements & open questions\nPreserve who disagreed about what. Unresolved items listed as questions, not smoothed into false consensus.\n## Action items\n[owner] → [action] → [deadline if stated]. Only items the source actually assigns.\n\nHARD RULES:\n- Every claim in your summary must be traceable to the source. NOTHING may be inferred, averaged, or \"reasonably assumed\".\n- Preserve hedges: if the source says \"probably\", your summary says \"probably\". Removing uncertainty is falsification.\n- Disagreements are content, not noise — never merge opposing views into a neutral statement.\n- If a section has no content in the source, write \"None in source\" — do not fill it.\n\nSELF-CHECK BEFORE OUTPUT: pick your 3 most load-bearing claims and verify each exists in the source text verbatim or near-verbatim. If any doesn't, delete it.","whyItWorks":["Naming the reader and their next action focuses selection — summaries fail by summarizing for nobody.","'Preserve hedges' and 'disagreements are content' target the two ways summaries silently lie.","The traceable-claims rule plus the 3-claim self-check measurably cuts summary hallucination.","Structured sections turn 'summarize' from a compression task into an extraction task — models are far better at extraction."],"commonMistakes":["'Summarize this' with no structure — returns generic bullets that flatten decisions into topics.","Letting the model resolve disagreements — false consensus is the most dangerous summary failure.","No hedge preservation — 'might work' becomes 'works' after two summary hops."],"keywords":["summarization prompt","summarize document ai","meeting summary prompt","tldr prompt"],"updated":"2026-07-18"}