The AI Intake Summary skill for Claude

The AI Intake Summary is a free skill from the library of 100 skills of TheSEO. A skill is an instruction file, SKILL.md, that gives an AI assistant a fixed method for one task. What a skill is exactly and why that format works so well you can read in what Claude skills are; this one is a text file of 2,342 words that tells Claude how to turn raw conversation input into a report somebody else can carry straight on with.

No software, no subscription, no link to your calendar: you download the zip at the top of this page, put it in your Claude environment and from that moment on Claude writes your conversations up according to this structure.

The problem the skill solves you probably know from your own week. You come out of a good conversation, you have three pages of keywords and a head full of context, and then the writing up begins. An hour later you have a report that recounts chronologically what was said, in which your own assumptions have quietly been written down as facts, and about which your colleague asks next week what was actually agreed. Or you do not write it up, and two weeks later you are standing over the quote wondering whether he did or did not mention that budget. Exactly those sighs are in the file literally as moments when the skill should kick in.

The instruction the file gives Claude is strict and simple at once. It opens with an identity of three sentences: you are an English-language intake analyst, you add nothing that was not there, and you make what is missing visible instead of writing it smooth. Everything that comes after, from the theory to the output blocks, is a working out of those three sentences.

This one is written for anyone who has client conversations and then has to deliver something: sole traders and freelancers, agencies, consultants, building and installation firms, coaches. Along with the rest of the skill library we make it available for free from the AI and automation service, with no account and no sales email afterwards.

Notes do not lose their value because you write badly, but through three creeping mistakes that almost everyone makes. All three are built into the method here, so it pays to have them sharp.

Mistake one: the report is chronological. You write down what happened, in the order in which it happened. It feels complete, but nobody reads it to the end, and the most important conclusion sits wherever the conversation happened to end. The file is hard about it: an intake report that recounts a conversation chronologically is unusable. That is why the skill enforces the pyramid structure, with the conclusion in the first five lines.

Mistake two: assumptions disguise themselves as facts. Between the conversation and the writing up sits your own head, and it fills gaps effortlessly. The client said quotes take three days; you write down that he loses revenue because of it. Perhaps true, but he did not say it. The moment that sentence is in the report, everyone treats it as a statement from the client, and you build a proposal on a foundation that is not there. Those two streams stay strictly separated here, and every inference is marked as an inference.

Mistake three: vague stays vague. Soon, shortly, reasonable budget, big problem: words that felt clear in the conversation and mean nothing on paper. Each one gets translated into something measurable or marked explicitly as unknown. Soon becomes within two weeks or unknown, never quietly filled in.

In diff form, with lines pointing to the example from the skill: what a smoothed-over report says, and what the skill makes of it instead.

A skill is only as good as its instructions, so we simply describe them here. The file opens with frontmatter that says when Claude should pick the skill up. Not only at direct requests such as summarise an intake, write up a call report or work up my notes, but also at sighs: I have three pages of scribble and no idea any more what was agreed, I lose an hour writing up after every conversation, my colleague cannot follow my notes, every report looks different. Say something like that to Claude while the skill is loaded and you get it automatically.

Then comes the heart: seven fixed actions the skill carries out for every summary. It reads the raw input all the way through and marks what is fact, what is a quotation and what you have already interpreted yourself. It sorts everything into the four SPIN layers and leaves a layer empty if there is no information for it. It puts the conclusion at the top, according to the pyramid. It translates vague indications into something measurable or marks them explicitly as unknown. It delivers a phased approach in outline. It delivers price framing without inventing amounts. And it closes with the list of missing information, including the exact questions to go and get it.

Before anything is written, the file holds a short input checklist of six points: the raw notes themselves, who the client is, what you sell or deliver, what the summary is for, whether things were agreed that are not in the notes, and whether a deadline or a follow-up appointment was mentioned. The instruction attached is typical: only ask about what is missing and keep it short, because this skill is often used by someone who has just come out of a conversation. Paste only notes with no context and it simply carries on, putting its assumptions visibly in a separate block.

A striking number of rules are about language. Clear English addressing the reader as you, short sentences alternating with long ones, a figure above an adjective, and quotations from the client in quotation marks and word for word. Do not smooth them out, says the file, because the client's own wording is the most usable material for the quote. There is also a separate review mode: give it an existing call report or intake form and you get a completeness test per SPIN layer, a marking of every assumption written down as a fact, a vagueness scan, the qualification gaps at the top and a rewritten version according to the standard structure.

The file closes with a source list of five entries, from Rackham to Weiss. More on that below, because that theory is the reason the report is built the way it is built. If you want to learn to write such an instruction file yourself, the full method is in writing a SKILL.md.

According to its own explanation the skill combines two recognised frameworks: one for what you take out of a conversation, and one for how you write it down. The SKILL.md names its sources, and that is deliberate: it lets you read them and decide for yourself whether you agree.

The content comes from Neil Rackham. For what has to be taken out of a conversation the skill uses the logic of SPIN, described in Spin Selling in 1988. Rackham analysed large numbers of sales conversations and found that successful conversations produce four kinds of information: the facts, the problem in the words of the client, what that problem costs, and what it delivers once it is solved. Holding the conversation itself according to that method is a different craft from writing the report, and there is a separate skill for it: the SPIN Sales Conversation skill.

The form comes from Barbara Minto. Her Pyramid Principle, developed at McKinsey and described in 1987, says: start with the conclusion, then the supporting points, and only then the details. Hence the heart of it in five lines at the top of every report. A reader who reads only that block can retell the conversation; everything else is depth for anyone who needs it.

The qualification comes from BANT, and the file is honest about it. Budget, Authority, Need, Timing is generally attributed to IBM and has no traceable original publication. Not a model but a checklist, says the SKILL.md literally, and that is exactly how it uses it: four points, per point known or unknown, with the source attached. For complex B2B processes with several decision makers the file names MEDDIC as a heavier alternative, with the note that most small business intakes do not need it.

The handover comes from SBAR, the price question from Weiss. SBAR, from the United States Navy and widely applied in healthcare since the start of this century, is the compact variant for an internal handover: Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation in about half a page. And from Alan Weiss, author of Million Dollar Consulting, comes the thinking behind the price framing: ask about the cost of the problem before you name a price. Anyone who wants to understand what the client is really trying to achieve behind the question they asked can lay the report beside the Jobs to be Done Analyst skill .

You can improve your own reports with these principles without installing the skill: put the conclusion at the top, separate what the client said from what you assume, and write down what you do not know instead of writing around it.

The zip contains one folder with the SKILL.md inside it. Installing is a matter of putting the file in the right place, and that place differs per environment. SKILL.md has been an open standard since December 2025, so the same skill also works in Codex, Cursor and Gemini CLI. You are therefore not downloading a Claude file but a working instruction that any modern AI assistant can read. The full guide per environment, with screenshots, is in installing Claude skills.

After that, use is simple: paste your notes straight after the conversation and ask for a summary. The rawer the input, the more the structure delivers; tidying up first is a waste of your time. Whatever is missing, it asks about itself, and keeps that short. New to this kind of file? The knowledge base holds the broader explanation of working with AI.

According to the file the skill has several modes, and picks the form to fit the conversation. You use the full structure with all ten blocks for an intake leading to a quote. For an internal handover to a colleague or project lead it switches to the SBAR variant of about half a page. After a short phone call the shortened variant of three blocks is enough: the heart of it, what is missing, the next step, because nobody reads a two-page report about a seven-minute conversation.

For processes with more than two decision makers or a tender a decision maker analysis is added, with what each person wins or loses from a yes. Work with a word-for-word transcript and the quotations get time stamps. And with repeat conversations with the same client the report starts with what has changed since last time.

There are limits too, and they are in the file itself. Writing a full quote is not part of it: that is a separate step after the summary, with its own document and its own logic, and there is the AI Quote Writer skill for it, which builds on exactly this report. Files where legal requirements apply to record keeping, medical or legal, are out of scope as well: there the law decides the format, not the readability. And it does not work with recordings for which no consent was given.

The most honest limit is this: your report gets better, your conversation does not. Ask the wrong questions and the report shows that mercilessly, because the empty layers and open fields are visibly in it. That is a hard swallow, but it is exactly the feedback that makes your next conversation better. When the price comes up later, the Negotiator skill helps with the conversation that follows the proposal.

A better intake report makes everything that follows stronger, but there do have to be conversations to summarise. When too few enquiries come in, the real work sits before this document: being found by the people looking for you. The free SEO scan shows in a few seconds where your site stands. And if you want to talk further about what AI can do for your business, from separate skills to full automation, we simply do that in a conversation.