Run a Decision-Focused Recurring Meeting

• F

  Fellow

  AI Productivity & Meetings

  AI meeting assistant for notes, recaps and action items

  Free tier◦Documented
• F

  Fathom

  AI Productivity & Meetings

  AI note taker that records, transcribes and summarizes meetings

  Free tier◦Documented

1. 1

   Step 1: Define the decisions before adding topics

   Write the outcome of the meeting as decisions that must exist by the end: approve, choose, reject, assign or escalate. Convert vague topics such as “roadmap” into answerable questions such as “Which two roadmap items enter the next sprint?” Name the decision owner and required participants for each question. If the decision-maker cannot attend, move the item or redefine the meeting as preparation only. Verification is simple: every agenda item must end in a decision, a named deliverable or an explicit reason it belongs as information.

2. 2

   Step 2: Collect pre-reading and unresolved carry-over

   Attach the minimum evidence participants need before the meeting: options, constraints, prior decision, owner and requested preparation. Pull forward only unresolved actions or questions that still affect the new decisions. Do not copy the entire previous agenda. Give pre-reading a deadline and state what participants should do with it. The step passes when someone opening the agenda can prepare without searching another channel and can see why each carry-over item remains open.

   Tool: Fellow

3. 3

   Step 3: Build and time-box the agenda

   Use the outcome-led agenda prompt with the meeting duration, participants and decision questions. Allocate time for presenting evidence, discussing trade-offs and recording the decision. Reserve a closing block for actions and unresolved questions. Keep status updates asynchronous unless discussion is required. Sum every block, including transitions; if the total exceeds the meeting length, the agenda is not viable. Verification requires a complete time total and a clear facilitator or decision owner for each block.

4. 4

   Step 4: Pressure-test scope and attendance

   Run the pressure-test prompt and challenge the draft manually. Look for decisions without the right authority, dependencies hidden in pre-reading, more topics than the time allows and agenda items that could be a written update. Use the repair prompt when the schedule is overloaded; defer lower-value items instead of shortening every discussion to an unrealistic duration. Record what was removed and why. A good agenda makes exclusions visible rather than pretending all work fits.

5. 5

   Step 5: Capture decisions and prepare the next recurrence

   During or after the meeting, record the final decision, its owner, effective date, supporting rationale and any dissent or condition. Link each action to the decision that created it. At closing, identify unresolved questions and decide whether they need asynchronous work or a future meeting. Build the next agenda from the decision log and unresolved list, not from memory. Verify the record with the decision owner before distributing it, particularly when transcript wording could make a tentative statement look final.

   Tool: Fathom

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• Build an outcome-led agenda · tested on OpenAI GPT-5 (Codex) — editorial dry run
• Pressure-test a meeting agenda · tested on OpenAI GPT-5 (Codex) — editorial dry run
• Repair an overloaded agenda · tested on OpenAI GPT-5 (Codex) — editorial dry run

• OutputIllustrative scenario: overloaded agenda repaired

  Synthetic fixture: six topics requested for 30 minutes. The first draft required 52 minutes. After checking authority and purpose, two status updates moved asynchronous and one decision moved because its owner was absent. The final agenda totalled 30 minutes with three decision blocks and a five-minute close.

• DatasetTesting limitation

  The meeting, agenda and participants were synthetic. The process was executed in Codex on 2026-10-03; no Fellow workspace, Fathom meeting or real calendar event was used.

✓Last verified Oct 3, 2026