Customizable AI Summaries
January 17, 2026
Make AI Work the Way Your Team Thinks
Your team is unique. The way you run retrospectives, the insights you care about, the format that actually gets read by leadership. Generic AI summaries can miss this entirely. They give you the same templated output regardless of whether you're a startup moving fast or an enterprise team with compliance requirements. We're changing that.
Customizable AI Summaries let you take control of how AI generates summaries for your retrospectives and standups. From simple instruction tweaks to fully custom markdown output, you decide what the AI focuses on, how it presents information, and what format works best for your workflow.
What's New
Additional Instructions
Not ready to fully customize your summary format? Start here. Add guidance to influence how the AI generates your summary without changing the underlying structure. Tell it to focus on specific themes, adjust the tone, or emphasize certain types of feedback.
Tone adjustments: Request a more direct tone, a positive framing, or executive-friendly language
Focus areas: Tell the AI to prioritize blockers, ignore minor wins, or dig deeper into process issues
Custom emphasis: Highlight cross-team dependencies, call out repeated concerns, or surface anything your standard summary misses
Exclusions: Instruct the AI to skip certain topics or de-emphasize areas that aren't relevant to your team's goals
This works beautifully for teams that like our predefined summary structure but want the content tailored to their specific needs. The summary still follows our established format with sections like summary, column analysis, and team dynamics, but the AI writes with your priorities in mind.
Fully Custom Summary Format
This is the big one. Enable Custom Summary Format and you're in complete control. Instead of our predefined structure, you provide a template describing exactly how you want your summary to look. The AI generates freeform markdown following your specification.
Your structure, your rules: Define any combination of sections, headings, and content types
Tables, Lists, anything: Request interaction stats in a table, categorized action items, sentiment breakdowns, whatever you need
Match existing workflows: Replicate the format your team already uses for sprint reports or leadership updates
Unlimited flexibility: The AI generates whatever markdown you describe, no constraints from our default template
We've seen teams use this to create summaries that plug directly into their existing documentation, match their company's retrospective report format, or generate executive digests that strip away the detail and focus purely on strategic insights.
In-Meeting Customization
You don't have to leave your meeting to experiment with summary formats. Access AI Settings directly from within any retrospective or standup session. This opens a quick settings panel where you can enable custom formats, write instructions, and regenerate your summary immediately.
Iterate in real-time: Tweak your instructions, regenerate, and see the results without navigating away
Per-meeting adjustments: Fine-tune the summary for this specific session based on what came up in discussion
No context switching: Stay focused on your meeting while optimizing how AI captures it
Instant feedback loop: Test different approaches until you find what works, then apply it to future meetings
This makes customization genuinely practical. Instead of guessing what instructions might work, you can experiment with live data and immediately see the results.
Space-Level Configuration
Set your default AI behavior at the space level so every meeting inherits your preferred configuration. Navigate to the Space AI tab to establish your team's standard summary format and instructions.
Consistent experience: All retrospectives and standups in your space follow the same AI guidelines
Onboarding simplified: New meetings automatically use your established format
Override when needed: Individual meetings can still deviate from the default if a specific session requires different handling
How It Works
For Retrospectives
When Custom Summary Format is enabled, you provide Summary Instructions that act as the AI's primary guidance. Here's an example that generates a TLDR focused on problems plus an interaction stats table:
The retrospective summary should look like the following
TLDR Short summary from the retrospective. 1-5 sentences giving a brief overview. Focus on negative things, not successes. I want to know what is not working and what needs to be fixed.
Stats Create a table of interaction stats. Columns should be name, items created, comments, reactions, votes.
The AI reads all the items, comments, votes, and discussion from your retrospective and generates markdown that matches your specification exactly. You get a focused TLDR on pain points and a clean stats table showing participation, rather than our standard multi-section breakdown.
For Standups
The same customization options apply to your daily standup summaries. Want a quick morning digest that surfaces blockers and skips the fluff? Write instructions for that. Need a format that integrates with your existing team communication style? Specify the structure and let the AI handle it.
Standup summaries often benefit from brevity. Custom instructions let you strip down the output to just what your team needs to start the day, whether that's a bullet list of blockers, a categorized breakdown by project, or a simple highlight of who might need support.
Why This Matters
AI Needs to Adapt to You, Not the Other Way Around
Every team operates differently. The insights that matter to a product team running weekly retros look nothing like what an engineering team needs from their bi-weekly sessions. A startup founder wants to see trends and big-picture concerns. An engineering manager needs granular detail on technical blockers.
Generic AI summaries force you to extract the relevant information yourself. You read through sections that don't apply to you, mentally filter out the noise, and reconstruct the narrative that actually matters for your context. That's work the AI should be doing.
Customizable summaries flip this around. You teach the AI what you care about once, and every summary after that speaks directly to your needs. No more translation layer between the AI's output and your actual workflow.
Your Summaries Already Fit Your Documentation
Many teams have established formats for sprint reports, retrospective archives, or leadership updates. When AI summaries don't match these formats, someone has to manually reformat the content before it goes anywhere useful. That's friction that kills adoption.
With custom summary formats, you can generate output that matches your existing templates exactly. Copy it directly into Confluence, paste it into your team's Notion database, or include it in your weekly stakeholder email without touching a thing. The AI becomes an extension of your documentation workflow rather than an interruption to it.
Experimentation Without Commitment
The in-meeting customization approach means you can try different summary formats with zero risk. Don't like how a new instruction set performed? Tweak it and regenerate. Found a format that works perfectly for this specific sprint? Save it as your default going forward.
This lowers the barrier to actually using these features. You're not committing to a new workflow before you've seen results. You're iterating in real-time until you find what works.
PDF Export Compatibility
Worth noting: your customized summaries work perfectly with PDF export. Whatever markdown format you specify, whatever tables or custom sections you include, it all renders correctly when you export your meeting to PDF for archival or sharing. The customization doesn't break anything about the existing export workflow.
Getting Started
Quick Start: Additional Instructions
Open any retrospective or standup in the Complete phase
Click the AI Settings icon in the summary section
Add your additional instructions in the text field
Regenerate the summary to see results
Full Customization: Custom Summary Format
Toggle on "Custom Summary Format" in AI Settings
Write your Summary Instructions describing the format you want
Be specific about sections, content types, and any tables or special formatting
Generate your summary and iterate until it matches your needs
Space Defaults
Navigate to your space settings
Open the AI tab under Manage AI
Configure your default instructions and format preferences
All new meetings in this space will inherit these settings
What Teams Are Building
We've seen early adopters create some genuinely useful custom formats:
Executive digests: Strip everything down to three bullets: biggest win, biggest concern, recommended action
Participation reports: Focus entirely on team dynamics with detailed engagement metrics
Action-only summaries: Skip the analysis entirely and just list action items with owners and due dates
Themed retrospectives: Generate summaries organized around specific themes like velocity, quality, or collaboration
Integration-ready formats: Match the exact structure required by external tools or documentation systems
The flexibility here is real. If you can describe it, the AI can generate it.
Available now for all retrospectives and standups. Open any completed meeting and click the AI Settings icon to start customizing.