meeting-synthesis

name	meeting-synthesis
description	Workflow for turning meeting transcripts or notes into decisions, action items, unresolved questions, risks, and follow-up artifacts. Use for prompts like "summarize this meeting", "extract action items", "what did we decide", or "draft the follow-up". Best when you have notes or a transcript, attendee context, and the reason the meeting happened. Optional Open Brain search and capture can pull surrounding context and store the final synthesis or decisions.
author	Nate B. Jones
version	1.0.0

Meeting Synthesis

Problem

Meeting notes are usually either too raw to reuse or too polished to trust. This skill turns them into a durable record of what happened, what was decided, what is still unresolved, and what needs to happen next.

Audience

• Primary: both operators and investors

When to Use

• Summarizing a partner, diligence, customer, or internal strategy meeting
• Extracting decisions, actions, and follow-up items from transcripts or notes
• Producing a clean meeting brief for a team or memo workflow
• Turning discussion into reusable decision context

When Not to Use

• Broad source synthesis across many documents: use research-synthesis
• Competitive market mapping without a meeting artifact: use competitive-analysis
• Final memo drafting from a full diligence packet: use deal-memo-drafting
• Reviewing spreadsheet assumptions: use financial-model-review

Required Context

Gather or confirm:

• transcript, notes, or a faithful meeting summary
• attendees and their roles if known
• the meeting purpose
• any surrounding project, deal, or strategic context
• whether the desired output is internal notes, a decision log, or a follow-up message

Process

1. Frame the meeting.
   • State what meeting this was and why it mattered.
2. Extract the real signal.
   • Separate decisions, action items, risks, unresolved questions, and useful context.
3. Attribute where possible.
   • Name owners and decision-makers when the notes support it.
4. Preserve uncertainty honestly.
   • If a point sounds important but was not resolved, keep it as unresolved.
5. Produce the right artifact.
   • Decision log, action list, follow-up draft, or meeting brief depending on the ask.
6. Optionally use Open Brain.
   • Search for prior related meetings or project notes before starting.
   • Capture key decisions or the final synthesis after the work is complete.

Evidence and Judgment Rules

• Use the meeting artifact as the primary source of truth.
• Do not inflate tentative discussion into final decisions.
• Keep attribution explicit when it is known and unforced when it is not.
• Preserve material disagreement or open risk instead of smoothing it away.
• Separate "decided", "assigned", and "discussed".

Output

Default output:

• meeting purpose and quick summary
• decisions made
• action items with owners if known
• risks and unresolved questions
• recommended next follow-up
• optional follow-up message or memo input

Works Well With

• research-synthesis when interviews or diligence calls become part of the evidence set
• deal-memo-drafting when management or partner calls inform the recommendation
• competitive-analysis when customer or market conversations sharpen the market picture

Notes

• This skill should reduce ambiguity, not create false closure.
• The most valuable meeting output is often the list of unresolved questions.