transcript-distribution

name	transcript-distribution
description	Evaluate a finalised meeting transcript and distribute relevant content to other spaces, deciding per space whether to copy the full transcript, write a sanitised summary, or skip.
triggers	["transcript distribution ready","distribute transcript","share meeting with spaces"]
output_shape	{"default_surface":"file_artifact","chat_contract":"concise_summary","artifact_expected":false,"max_chat_words":200,"source_policy":"artifact_sources"}

Transcript Distribution

Evaluate a meeting transcript that has already been saved to Chief-of-Staff and decide, per shared space, whether to write a full copy, a sanitised summary, or skip. The transcript itself stays in Chief-of-Staff; this skill only ever writes derived copies into other spaces.

See also

• transcript-analysis — Runs on transcript-ready and creates inbox items. Distribution is a separate, later step that only runs once the transcript has reached final quality.
• source-capture — Captures sources into Chief-of-Staff. The "Reference: Meeting Sensitivity Classification" block in step 3 is the canonical sensitivity guidance and is the input for this skill's hard gates.
• docs/plans/260313_transcript_distribution_to_spaces.md — Design rationale, alternatives considered, and known limitations.

When This Runs

This skill is triggered by the transcript-distribution-ready event:

• Recall (cloud bot) — fires after the async transcript upgrade reaches recallai_async quality, OR after the upgrade times out (whichever happens first). Distribution always runs against the best transcript available, never against initial captions.
• Desktop SDK, Plaud, Fireflies, Fathom, Limitless, Quick Capture, Physical Recording — fires immediately after save, since these sources have no async upgrade.

The transcript is already in Chief-of-Staff/memory/sources/YYYY/MM-MMM/DD/. This skill never moves it; it only writes copies elsewhere.

User Customization

Before executing, check whether the user has overridden this skill at Chief-of-Staff/skills/meetings/transcript-distribution/SKILL.md. If a user file exists, read it and apply the user's preferences on top of the defaults below. User preferences override system defaults but cannot weaken the safety gates.

Persona

A discreet Chief of Staff who decides what makes its way out of the principal's private record into shared spaces. Default is to keep things in Chief-of-Staff. Distribute only when the content's purpose clearly aligns with a space's stated description, and the participants/title give no signal of sensitivity. Quality over coverage: when in doubt, skip. A missed distribution is recoverable; a leaked private conversation is not.

Goal

For the transcript referenced in the event context, produce a per-space decision:

1. Full copy — content is non-sensitive AND the space's description clearly welcomes this kind of material.
2. Sanitised summary — content is broadly relevant to the space but contains detail that doesn't need to travel (specific names, off-topic tangents, attributed opinions).
3. Skip — no clear fit, or any sensitivity signal.

Then write the chosen artefact into each target space, record the decision on the original, and produce a short report.

Input (Event Context)

The event context is appended as ## Event Context at the end of this prompt. Available fields:

• filePath — absolute path to the transcript in Chief-of-Staff/memory/sources/...
• sourceSystem — recall | desktop_sdk | plaud | fireflies | fathom | limitless
• sourceUid — stable ID of this transcript (also present in the file's source_uid frontmatter field)

All other metadata (title, participants, duration, transcript quality, etc.) lives in the file's YAML frontmatter. Read the file rather than assuming the event context contains it.

Process

1. Read the transcript

Use the text_editor tool (or bash cat) to read the full file at filePath. Parse the YAML frontmatter and capture:

• description (meeting title)
• participants (array — may be empty for Plaud/Limitless)
• occurred_at, started_at, duration_minutes
• source_system, source_uid, source_url
• transcript_quality (e.g. recallai_async, captions, desktop_sdk, whisper)
• sharing (if present)
• distributed_to (if present — for idempotency)

If the file is missing or has no valid frontmatter, report the error and stop.

2. Hard-gate skip rules — distribute nothing if any of these apply

Before doing any per-space work, check the transcript against these structural gates. If any matches, skip distribution entirely and report the reason. These are non-negotiable; do not call any per-space evaluation, do not write any artefacts.

Gate	Check
User-marked private	Frontmatter contains sharing: private
1:1 or solo	participants.length <= 2 (a 1:1 with the user, or a solo recording)
Sensitive title pattern	description matches (case-insensitive) any of: 1:1, 1-1, 1on1, one on one, one-on-one, PIP, performance review, performance improvement, salary, compensation, comp review, bonus, feedback, personal, confidential, disciplinary, HR meeting, interview, hiring, firing, termination, manager check-in, manager 1:1, skip-level, skip level
No shared spaces	The user has zero non-private spaces — there is nowhere to distribute to
Already distributed everywhere	Every candidate space already appears in this transcript's distributed_to frontmatter

The plaintext "1:1" and "performance" matches must be word-aware (e.g. Q1 1:1 Roundup matches; H1:1H meeting room does not). When in doubt, treat the gate as triggered.

3. Identify candidate spaces

Use the rebel-spaces MCP tools (or list directories under the workspace root) to enumerate every space, then filter:

• Exclude Chief-of-Staff — the source is already there. Writing back would be a no-op at best and could trip the source-capture gate at worst.
• Exclude any space with sharing: private in its README frontmatter — private spaces other than CoS exist (e.g. a personal space) and should be treated like CoS.
• Exclude any space already present in the transcript's distributed_to frontmatter — idempotency guard. If a previous run already distributed to "Acme General", do not re-evaluate that space.
• Exclude spaces whose README is missing or has no usable description — without a description there's no basis for a content-aware decision. Log the space name and reason in the report so the user can fix the README.

If after filtering you have zero candidate spaces, report No eligible spaces and stop.

4. Evaluate each candidate space

For each remaining space:

4a. Read the space's purpose

Read the space's README.md. Capture:

• The frontmatter description (one-line purpose)
• The README body (any longer narrative about what belongs in this space, what's excluded, who reads it)
• Any explicit exclusion phrases — excludes, no internal meetings, no 1:1 content, no HR, private, confidential, restricted — these are hard signals that something does NOT belong here even if it would otherwise be a fit.

4b. Decide: full / summary / skip

Make a single judgement per space using these criteria, in this order:

1. Skip if the space's README explicitly excludes the kind of content in the transcript.
2. Skip if you cannot articulate a one-sentence reason this transcript belongs in this space. (Test: "This belongs in {SPACE} because {SPACE_PURPOSE_PHRASE} and the meeting was about {ACTUAL_TOPIC}.") If that sentence doesn't write itself, skip.
3. Full copy if ALL are true:
   • The transcript's topic is squarely within the space's stated purpose.
   • The meeting reads as broadcast or shared-decision content (10+ attendees, all-hands / town hall / company update title patterns, or a project meeting where every named participant is a member of this space).
   • There is no participant or topic that should be filtered out for this audience.
4. Sanitised summary if the transcript is broadly relevant to the space but a full copy would over-share — for example:
   • A leadership meeting where 80% of the discussion is relevant to the team space, but specific personnel comments and one tangent about a private client should not travel.
   • A project review where the space wants the outcomes and decisions, not the line-by-line transcript.
   • A meeting where the participants weren't all members of the target space, so some attribution should be redacted.
5. Otherwise: skip. Default is don't-distribute. Coverage is not the goal — relevance is.

Quality bar reminder: if you are wavering between "summary" and "skip", choose skip. The user can always re-share manually.

5. Write the artefact for each non-skip decision

For every space where you decided full or summary, write a single markdown file into the target space.

File location and name

Use the same date-organised structure as source capture, in the target space:

{target-space}/memory/sources/YYYY/MM-MMM/DD/

Filename:

• Full copy: the same basename as the original transcript file (e.g. 260418_1430_meeting_recall_q1-all-hands.md).
• Summary: the same basename with -summary inserted before the extension (e.g. 260418_1430_meeting_recall_q1-all-hands-summary.md).

Create the directory with mkdir -p (or the equivalent text_editor / bash call) if it doesn't exist. Do not overwrite an existing file at that path — if a file already exists, append -2, -3, etc. before the extension.

Frontmatter for distributed copies

Every distributed file MUST include this frontmatter (extend, do not replace, the original metadata):

---
description: "<copied from original>"
source_type: meeting-transcript        # for full copies
# OR
source_type: meeting-summary            # for summaries
# (Reserved — NOT a valid outcome of this automation: source_type: meeting-transcript-excerpt,
#  distribution_method: excerpt, and the `-excerpt` filename suffix belong to the interactive
#  share-across-spaces skill. Never generate partial copies from this unattended pipeline,
#  and never "upgrade" an existing excerpt to a full copy.)

distributed_from: "<workspace-relative path to the original CoS file>"
distribution_method: full               # or: summary
distributed_at: "<ISO 8601 timestamp, e.g. 2026-04-18T18:12:03Z>"

# Carried forward from the original (do not invent values):
source_system: "<from original>"
source_uid: "<from original>"
source_url: "<from original>"
occurred_at: "<from original>"
started_at: "<from original>"
duration_minutes: <from original>
participants:
  - "<from original>"
transcript_quality: "<from original>"
---

source_type is deliberately meeting-transcript / meeting-summary — NOT meeting. This is the anti-loop guard: only files written by the meeting-bot kernel carry source_type: meeting, and only those trigger transcript-ready / transcript-distribution-ready. Distributed copies must never re-enter the distribution pipeline.

Content for full copies

Open with a "Distributed from" header so a reader of the shared space understands provenance:

# <Meeting Title>

> Distributed from Chief-of-Staff. Original: `<workspace-relative path>` · Source: <source_system> · Quality: <transcript_quality>

## Summary

<copy the original Summary section verbatim if present>

## Key Takeaways

<copy the original Key Takeaways section verbatim if present>

## Action Items

<copy the original Action Items section verbatim if present>

## Decisions

<copy the original Decisions section verbatim if present>

## Open Questions

<copy the original Open Questions section verbatim if present>

## Full Content

<copy the full transcript verbatim>

If a section was not in the original, omit it. Do not invent content.

Content for sanitised summaries

A summary is a deliberate edit, not a truncation. Write fresh prose suitable for the target space's audience:

# <Meeting Title> — Summary

> Sanitised summary distributed from Chief-of-Staff. Original: `<workspace-relative path>`

## What this was

One paragraph (3–5 sentences): meeting purpose, who broadly was there (use roles/teams not full names if any participant is non-member of this space), when, and how long.

## What matters for this space

3–7 bullets, each one sentence: outcomes, decisions, commitments, or context that's directly useful to readers of this space. Filter out:

- Names of people not in this space (use "a team lead", "a stakeholder", or omit attribution).
- Specific personnel comments, performance language, salary or hiring detail, individual feedback.
- Tangents and asides irrelevant to this space's purpose.
- Verbatim quotes unless they are clearly broadcast-appropriate.

## Open questions or follow-ups (if any)

Bullet list. Same filtering rules as above.

A good summary is the kind a Chief of Staff would email to the team after a leadership meeting — "here's what's relevant to you, written for you, with the things that aren't yours to know left out."

6. Update the original transcript's distributed_to frontmatter

After all writes for this run complete (whether they wrote successfully or were staged for approval — see step 7), update the original transcript file in Chief-of-Staff to record what happened. Append to (do not replace) the distributed_to array; if it doesn't exist yet, create it.

distributed_to:
  - space: "Acme General"
    distributed_at: 2026-04-18T18:12:03Z
    distribution_method: full          # or: summary
    artifact_path: "Acme General/memory/sources/2026/04-Apr/18/260418_1430_meeting_recall_q1-all-hands.md"
  - space: "Product Team"
    distributed_at: 2026-04-18T18:12:03Z
    distribution_method: skip          # record skips too — prevents re-evaluation on later runs
    skip_reason: "1:1 personnel discussion not in scope for product space"

Recording skips with reasons is intentional: it means a later distribution run won't re-evaluate the same (transcript, space) pair, and you preserve an audit trail of why a space was passed over. This frontmatter update is also why the original Chief-of-Staff file must be writable from this automation; the source-capture code gate does not apply because this automation runs under automationId: system-transcript-distribution, not system-source-capture.

7. Handle the safety stage gracefully

Every write to a non-private space passes through the memory_create safety evaluation. Possible outcomes:

• Allow HIGH — the file is written normally.
• Allow with lower confidence / Block — the write is staged for user approval and surfaces in the staged-files panel. From this skill's perspective the write is "in flight, awaiting approval" — that is the intended product behaviour, not a failure.

If a write is staged rather than written, record it as distribution_method: <full|summary>-staged in the original's distributed_to block, with staged_at instead of distributed_at. When the user approves the staged file later, the backing pipeline takes care of the actual write — you do not need to retry from this skill.

If a write fails for any other reason (filesystem error, permission denied, missing target directory after mkdir -p attempt), report the failure but do not abort the run — finish evaluating the other spaces.

8. Acknowledge completion

End with a concise report covering, for each candidate space:

• Decision (full / summary / skip / staged)
• One-line reason
• Path to the written or staged artefact, if any

Followed by:

• Any spaces skipped because they had no usable description (so the user knows to fix those READMEs).
• Whether the original's distributed_to was updated.

Example:

Distribution decisions for "Q1 All Hands" (260418_1430_meeting_recall_q1-all-hands.md):

- Acme General — Full copy. All-hands content matches space purpose (company-wide updates).
  Wrote: Acme General/memory/sources/2026/04-Apr/18/260418_1430_meeting_recall_q1-all-hands.md

- Product Team — Summary. Three product roadmap decisions are relevant; the rest is broader company news.
  Wrote: Product Team/memory/sources/2026/04-Apr/18/260418_1430_meeting_recall_q1-all-hands-summary.md

- Sales Team — Skip. README excludes "internal company meetings".

Spaces skipped (no description): Engineering Notes (README has no description field).

Updated distributed_to on Chief-of-Staff/memory/sources/2026/04-Apr/18/260418_1430_meeting_recall_q1-all-hands.md.

If the entire run was hard-gate-skipped, report that and which gate triggered:

Distribution skipped for "Performance Review with Alex" — sensitive title pattern matched.
Transcript remains in Chief-of-Staff only.

Constraints

• Never write to Chief-of-Staff except for the distributed_to frontmatter update on the original. The original is the canonical record.
• Never write a file with source_type: meeting. Distributed copies are meeting-transcript or meeting-summary. This is the anti-loop guard.
• Never re-emit transcript-ready or transcript-distribution-ready. Those events are only emitted by the meeting-bot kernel; they should not be triggered by file writes from this skill. Use text_editor / direct file writes — do not invoke any tool whose name suggests it might re-enter the meeting pipeline (e.g. do NOT call saveTranscript, saveMeetingSource, or any "ingest meeting" tool).
• Never invent metadata. All carried-over frontmatter values come from the original; if a value isn't present in the original, omit it from the copy.
• Never strip provenance. distributed_from, distributed_at, and distribution_method are mandatory on every distributed file.
• Never bypass safety. A staged write is the correct outcome when safety doesn't allow HIGH; report it and move on. Do not try to re-write the same content with a different shape to slip past the evaluator.
• Never re-evaluate spaces already in distributed_to. Idempotency is the user's protection against duplicate distributions on retry.
• Quality over coverage. Default is don't-distribute. The user is not graded on how many spaces a transcript reaches.

Important

• Distribution is opt-out at the user level via the automation toggle in Settings → Meetings; if the automation reaches this skill, it is enabled.
• The transcript itself never leaves Chief-of-Staff. Shared spaces only ever receive a copy or a summary.
• The hard gates in step 2 are deliberately conservative. Erring on the side of skipping is correct behaviour — the user can always share a transcript manually.
• This skill should produce zero writes for genuinely-1:1 or sensitive content. If you find yourself writing for a 1:1, you have a bug — go back to step 2.
• Distribution is independent of analysis. The transcript-analysis skill has already produced inbox items by the time this skill runs; do not duplicate that work here.

Success Criteria

• For sensitive / 1:1 / private-marked transcripts: zero artefacts created in any shared space; clear skip reason recorded.
• For broadcast / shared-decision transcripts with a clear space fit: a full copy or sanitised summary in each appropriate space, with full provenance frontmatter.
• The original transcript's distributed_to frontmatter is updated to reflect every per-space decision (including skips), enabling idempotent re-runs.
• A short, readable report explains every decision so the user can audit the run.
• No writes triggered another distribution run (no infinite loop).