brief/skills/internal-meeting-brief/references/section-structure.md

internal-meeting-brief — section structure

Derived from the first real run (2026-09-21, APTA 2026 Booth 09-16 recap) and made explicit here so every future brief has the same skeleton instead of reinventing its structure per meeting. This is the contract — read it before generating a brief.

Always present (fixed, in this order)

1. Header — title (meeting subject, not the raw Plaud filename), meeting date + duration, prepared date, source (transcript / manual notes), mode (Agenda/Recap). Also attach relevant deal-identifying context in the header/subhead when the topic is a commercial engagement — e.g. the SO/PO numbers and total, as validated in the Oshkosh brief — so the document is self-identifying without opening the manifest.
2. Attendees — one card per attendee. Internal MPM people resolved by name where possible. If Plaud's speaker diarization didn't resolve a name, render the literal transcript label ("Speaker 1," "Speaker 3") — never guess a name. Follow with a note.info flagging any unresolved speakers explicitly, so it's visible, not buried. When external counterparts are named in discussion but weren't present, give them their own card group ("Named in discussion, not present") with resolved contact info (see SKILL.md step 4) rather than omitting them or burying them in prose. If the topic has a real end-client organization (an agency, most commonly), give it a distinct "End Agency" card of its own — separate from individual people — showing the legal-name/brand-name pair (e.g. "City of Oshkosh, dba: GO Transit"), a re-hosted logo, website, and general contact info. See SKILL.md step 5.
3. Topics Covered — a cards grid, one card per distinct subject actually discussed. Card count and grid density (c2/c3/c4) follow the number of real topics — don't pad to hit a round number, don't force unrelated topics into one card to save space.
4. Key Decisions (recap) or Discussion Plan (agenda) — decisions actually made (recap) or points to be raised (agenda). Use quad when there are 3-5 distinct, roughly parallel decisions; use plain prose or a note when there's only one or two, since forcing a single decision into a quad grid wastes space and implies false parallelism.
5. Open Items — an actions table with status pills. Every action item needs an owner field even if the honest value is "Unassigned" — never leave the column blank, since a blank reads as "forgotten to track" rather than "no owner yet." When the brief includes action items Claude is suggesting rather than items the meeting itself raised (validated pattern from the Oshkosh brief), split them into two visually distinct tables with a labeled subhead and a badge (e.g. MEETING vs. PROPOSED), and say explicitly that proposed items are suggestions needing an owner to accept them — never blend a suggestion into the same table as a committed action item where they'd read as equally real.
6. Notes & Flags — one note per genuinely separate concern: data-source limitations encountered (a failed pull, a missing transcript), naming/identity uncertainty, anything that needed a judgment call worth surfacing rather than silently resolving. This section exists specifically so the never-fabricate rule has somewhere to put its flags, visibly, not as a footnote.

Present only when content genuinely calls for it (dynamic)

A dynamic section is content that has a specific internal structure the fixed sections above would flatten into an unreadable wall of text or an over-long table row. Add one only when the meeting's actual content has this shape — never as decoration, never because a template "should" have variety.

| If sequential, ordered process (3+ steps, each depending on the last) | flow | Anti-vandalism 3-tier escalation (09-16 meeting); Oshkosh deployment sequence, client kickoff → survey → mount → install → go-live → acceptance (09-22 meeting) — validated in real production use | | A named component/system with distinct sub-parts worth breaking out | layerbox + filepill | (not yet exercised on a real internal-meeting-brief; seen in development-brief-flavored source material) | | A genuine two-sided contrast (us/them, before/after, keep/avoid) | compare | (not yet exercised on internal-meeting-brief; used in vendor-partner-style source material) | | A spec/BOM-style matrix with yes/no or multi-column comparison | unitgrid | (not yet exercised) | | A handful of headline numbers worth calling out at a glance | specbar | Oshkosh billing milestones — three estimate amounts + total, each with its own trigger condition — validated in real production use |

Rule of thumb: if you're reaching for a dynamic section and can't point to the specific part of the meeting that has this shape, don't add it. The fixed six sections above should carry ordinary meeting content on their own. Dynamic sections are earned by unusual content structure, not added for visual variety.

What's still unproven

This contract is based on exactly one real run. It hasn't been tested against:

• Agenda mode (only recap mode has run for real)
• A meeting with genuinely no clear "topics" (a single-subject deep-dive)
• A meeting needing more than one dynamic section
• A recurring topic's second brief (pre-fill/delta-confirm behavior for attendees, per CW-027 Concept.md, hasn't been exercised — the 09-16 brief was a topic's first run, full interview by necessity)

Revise this file after the second real run rather than treating it as settled.