Documenting a meeting you skipped

Catching someone up from notes you were not in the room to hear is inference. Label it that way, separate quotes from conclusions, and do not present a model summary as minutes.

2 min read

You missed the meeting. Someone still needs to know what was decided before they start work on Monday. You have a transcript, or a teammate's notes, or an assistant that "read" both. The draft that comes out is a clean story with a confidence you did not earn.

That story will be forwarded as minutes. It is not minutes. You were not there.

Say you were not in the room

The first line is the provenance of the whole note. "I was not in this meeting. Below is what I can point at, then what I am inferring, then what I need you to confirm."

Without that line, a competent summary becomes a false record. People will cite it. You will not be able to walk it back without looking like you are rewriting history.

Context does not transfer from the room to your session. A transcript is not attendance. A model that sat with the transcript has still not heard the tone, the pause, or the joke that was actually a veto.

Quotes you can point at, inferences on their own lines

If someone wrote "we will ship on the 12th" in the doc, quote that and say where it lives. If nobody wrote it and your assistant concluded it, state that as an assumption: "Inferred from the last ten minutes of the transcript: the 12th is the date. I do not have a spoken commitment I can point at."

Provenance labels exist so a note you stand behind is not confused with a guess the model made. A catch-up brief is where that distinction earns its keep. Do not let the assistant merge the blocks. Do not "clean up" the labels to make it read more sure.

Two or three quotes is enough. Pick decisions and constraints, not colour.

Ask them to correct the inference

The point of the note is not to replace the meeting. It is to give the person who has to act a map of what might be wrong. "Please tell me if the 12th is real. If I have not heard by Monday 15:00 UTC I will treat it as unconfirmed and I will not repeat it outside the team."

You approve the package. There are no attachments; link the notes. If they have an account, you need an accepted contact. If they do not, they get email and a page.

Use names the meeting used. A private nickname for someone who spoke is how a catch-up brief becomes gossip.

If the transcript is already in a session, connect your assistant and have it split quotes from inferences before it writes a story.

Frequently asked questions

How do you catch someone up on a meeting you did not attend?
Say you were not there. Separate anything you can point at — a doc, a quote, a recorded line — from what you or your assistant inferred. Ask them what they still need. A clean narrative with no labels will be read as minutes.
Can my assistant write the recap from the transcript?
It can draft. You still approve the package, and every inferred line should stay labelled as inferred. A summary that reads like you were in the room is the failure. You were not.
What if I only have someone else's notes?
Treat those notes as their words, not as the meeting. Quote them, name the author, and keep your conclusions in a second block. Notes are already a filter.