✅ Action Items in Wave
Every Wave session can carry a checklist of action items — the concrete follow-ups, tasks, and next steps that came out of your conversation. Wave pulls them out of the recording automatically, and you can check them off, edit them, or add your own.
Where to find them
Open any session and tap the Action Items tab (next to Summary and Transcript). You'll see each task as a checklist item.
Action items are available across all Wave clients — mobile, web (app.wave.co), and desktop — and they stay in sync across your devices.
How action items are created
When a recording finishes processing, Wave reads the transcript and extracts any genuine follow-ups — things someone committed to, was asked to do, or that came up as a clear next step. Vague ideas and general discussion are left out; those belong in the summary.
A few things to know:
Action items are generated automatically for sessions longer than 5 minutes.
They're created for conversational recordings. Wave skips them for imported audio, YouTube videos, and podcasts.
If a session genuinely has no follow-ups, the list stays empty — Wave won't invent tasks.
What's in each action item
Beyond the task itself, Wave adds helpful details when it can:
Owner — when Wave can tell who's responsible, the person's name shows as @Name.
Due date — if a deadline was mentioned ("by Friday", "next week"), Wave resolves it to a date.
Timestamp — tap the ▶ time chip to jump straight to the moment in the recording where that item was discussed.
Editing your action items
The list is fully yours to manage:
Check one off — tap the checkbox to mark it done (it gets crossed out). The header shows how many are left, e.g. "3 of 5 remaining".
Edit the wording — tap any item's text and type. Changes save automatically.
Add your own — type in the "Add an action item…" field at the bottom and tap +.
Delete one — tap the trash icon on the right.
Your edits are safe. Once you've added or changed items yourself, Wave won't overwrite them if the session is reprocessed.
Action items + AI assistants
If you've connected Wave to Claude or ChatGPT, your AI assistant can read and update action items for you — for example, "pull the open action items from yesterday's standup" or "mark the contract task as done". Developers can do the same through the Wave API.
Tips
Want better task owners? Naming your speakers (or using Voice ID) helps Wave assign the right person.
Short recording with no action items? Add your own — the list works as a manual checklist too.