synthesis-meeting-prep · diff
v1.0.0 to v1.0.0
7 added, 5 removed. Audit A to A.
---
name: synthesis-meeting-prep
description: "Prepare a principal for any meeting the way a wise chief of staff would: weigh 60+ factors across the meeting, participants, principal's position, knowledge, and risk; model the readers before drafting; deliver a dense, scannable pack with a capture half; then debrief the transcript into decisions, commitments, and reader-profile updates. Use for 1:1s, reviews, forums, external meetings, interviews, and post-meeting follow-through."
license: "CC0-1.0"
depends_on: []
metadata:
author: "Rajiv Pant"
version: "1.0.0"
source_repo: "github.com/synthesisengineering/synthesis-skills"
source_type: "public"
---
# Meeting Prep
**Version 1.0.0** (2026-09-20): first release — the content contract
for meeting preparation (requirements R1–R12), the 64-factor
inventory, six structure variants, reader profiles, the debrief half,
and a mechanical prep linter (`scripts/prep_lint.py`).
An agent preparing a principal for a meeting is not a summarizer. It
is the principal's chief of staff for one room: it figures out what
the room needs, what the principal wants, what could go wrong, and
puts exactly that on one scannable page. The content contract lives
in [references/requirements.md](references/requirements.md) — R1–R12
are normative. This file is the operating protocol.
## 1. Configuration contract
All person-specific state lives outside the skill, in private paths
the skill reads at load time:
```
~/.synthesis/meeting-prep/principal.json # role, goals, authority, tells
~/.synthesis/meeting-prep/readers/<id>.md # per-person reader profiles (R12)
```
`principal.json` holds what the skill must know about the principal:
current role and org, professional and personal goals, what they can
commit in a room, their known positions, and their tells under
pressure. Reader profiles hold relationship, technical depth, what
the person cares about, what they have already been told, and what
- landed last time. Both are created by interview the first time the
- skill runs for a principal — never copied from another machine's
- private files. Missing config degrades gracefully: the skill asks
- the three questions it cannot proceed without (who is the reader to
- you, how technical, what is the meeting's job) and drafts anyway.
+ landed last time. Both are scaffolded by `scripts/prep_init.py`
+ (`init` once, `add-reader` per regular) and finished by interview
+ the first time the skill runs for a principal — never copied from
+ another machine's private files. Missing config degrades gracefully:
+ the skill asks the three questions it cannot proceed without (who is
+ the reader to you, how technical, what is the meeting's job) and
+ drafts anyway.
## 2. The prep loop
For every meeting, in order:
1. **Gather.** Pull the knowledge factors (inventory §4): workspace
OKF base, prior transcripts with these participants, comms since,
tickets/commits/deliverables, docs and decks, reader profiles,
the principal's writing samples to a comparable reader, external
research for new faces, and re-verified numbers. Record the basis
(R10) as you go — source, date, what it contributed.
2. **Model.** Write the audience model first (R2): each key
participant's relationship, technical depth, and cares; the power
map; the disclosure boundary. Then weigh the factor inventory and
name the drivers (§6, factor 63) — the 3–5 factors that set this
pack's shape. If a factor is unknown and material, say so; never
fill a material gap with a guess presented as fact (factor 62).
3. **Size.** Duration, format, prep budget, and energy set the length
(factors 4, 31, 32, 57). State the sizing in one line on the pack.
4. **Draft.** Pick the structure variant
([structures.md](references/structures.md)), drop inapplicable
sections, and write to R1–R9: discuss-forward, dense, translated
accomplishments, strategic altitude, specific credit, grounded
register, scannable, positive framing. Mark confidence inline —
fact, inference, guess.
5. **Lint.** Run `scripts/prep_lint.py` on the draft. It checks the
mechanical half of the contract: footer placement, register leaks
(ticket numbers and infrastructure terms for non-technical
readers), empty-sentence patterns, name-drop openers, unverified
numbers, missing basis. Fix every finding or record why it is
wrong — the linter is a backstop, not the author.
6. **Deliver.** The pack plus its capture half, filed where the
principal's workflow expects it (workspace `meeting-preps/` by
default, `<date>-<slug>-prep.md`), and the two-line drivers note
in chat. Never deliver brackets for the principal to fill in —
assembled packages, not assembly kits.
## 3. The debrief loop
After the meeting, when a transcript or notes exist:
1. **Verify the record.** Transcript-primary: the verbatim record is
the only source for attribution-bearing claims. Never derive who
said or decided what from a summary.
2. **Extract.** Decisions (verbatim where it matters), commitments
with owner and date — no ownerless commits — quotes worth keeping,
and the prep-vs-reality gap: what the prep missed or mis-weighted.
3. **Draft the follow-ups.** Assembled, in the principal's register,
ready to send — not a list of "follow up on X."
4. **Update the profiles.** Fold the gap into the reader profiles:
what landed, what didn't, what they were told. This is how prep
compounds.
5. **Capture durable facts.** Anything that belongs in the workspace
knowledge base goes there now, with provenance — not "later."
## 4. Integration seams
- **Daily rituals** (`synthesis-daily-rituals` lead-time prep packs)
own the scheduling machinery — which meetings need packs by when.
This skill is the content contract that machinery drafts against.
- **Meeting transcripts** (`synthesis-meeting-transcripts`) own
transcript fetch, naming, and the transcript-primary rule the
debrief depends on.
- **OKF** (`synthesis-okf`) is the workspace knowledge interface
for factor 37.
- **Console** renders packs filed under `meeting-preps/`; the basis
statement is what makes them trustworthy there.
## 5. What the skill refuses
- Prep for a reader it has not modeled — no model, no draft.
- Numbers it has not re-verified — stale figures kill credibility.
- Guesses presented as facts — mark confidence or cut the line.
- Prep that contradicts the principal's recorded positions.
- Anything that crosses the disclosure boundary for the room's
least-trusted attendee.