Build an Agenda and Pre-Read Pack for a Recurring Meeting

Workflow area: Meetings · Tier: Foundation · Hands-on time: ~25 minutes

A recurring meeting is a loop, and the agenda is what carries state between iterations. Most owners rebuild it from memory every week, which is why the loop leaks — actions vanish, decisions get re-argued, and the meeting fills with status theater. The fix is mechanical: feed the previous minutes and the open-action list into a structured prompt, and let the model do the assembly while you do the judgment — deciding what deserves the room's time.

When to use — and when not to

• Use it for meetings you ownweekly team syncs, project steering, monthly business reviews, anywhere you are the person expected to "send the agenda."
• Use it when actions keep slippingan agenda that opens with the aging action table is the cheapest accountability system ever invented.
• Use it to fight meeting bloata real pre-read moves status out of the room; the meeting shrinks to decisions and blockers.
• Skip it for first-time meetingsno prior minutes means no loop; write that agenda from your goals directly.
• Skip the formality for tiny standing callsa three-person 15-minute sync needs a shared checklist, not a pack.

The recipe

1. 1.

   Gather the loop's state. Three inputs: last meeting's minutes (from pb-04's pipeline if you use it), the open-action list with owners and dates, and any new topics submitted since. Sixty seconds of collection — the model assembles, you provide.

2. 2.

   Generate the timed agenda. Structure plus timeboxes plus explicit carryover:

   Copy

   Build a timed agenda for the next occurrence of this meeting.
   
   Meeting: [NAME], [DURATION] minutes, [ATTENDEES/ROLES]
   Purpose: [e.g. "weekly project steering — decisions and blockers,
   not status"]
   
   Last meeting's minutes:
   [PASTE MINUTES]
   
   Open actions (owner, due date, status):
   [PASTE ACTION LIST]
   
   New topics requested:
   [PASTE OR WRITE "none"]
   
   Rules:
   - Open with a 5-minute review of OVERDUE actions only, by name.
   - Carry forward any unresolved decision from last time as its own
     item — do not let it silently disappear.
   - Every item gets: a timebox, an owner, and a label — DECIDE,
     DISCUSS, or INFORM.
   - INFORM items go last and get minimal time; suggest which ones
     should move to the pre-read instead.
   - Total must fit [DURATION] minutes with 5 minutes buffer.
   

3. 3.

   Sanity-check the politics. Good output looks like:

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   AGENDA — Project Steering, Aug 12, 45 min
   1. 5 min — Overdue actions: Rahul (vendor demo, due Aug 8),
      Priya (revised timeline) — DECIDE: new dates or escalate
   2. 10 min — Carried over: launch date vs. QA capacity — DECIDE
      (owner: Anita)
   3. 15 min — Vendor contract terms — DISCUSS (owner: Rahul)
   4. 8 min — New: support-handover plan — DISCUSS (owner: Meera)
   5. 2 min — INFORM: hiring update → moved to pre-read
   Buffer: 5 min
   

   The model cannot know that item 3 is politically radioactive or that Anita needs item 2 decided before Thursday. Reorder for what actually matters; the timeboxes and carryover discipline are what you keep.

4. 4.

   Build the one-page pre-read. Second prompt, same chat: "Now write the one-page pre-read: 1) decisions needed at this meeting, with the context a busy attendee must know for each; 2) status summaries for the INFORM items; 3) the open-action table. Under 400 words. End with: 'Read before the meeting — we will not re-present this.'" Everything the room does not need to hear live goes here.

5. 5.

   Send with a deadline, then close the loop. Circulate agenda plus pre-read at least 24 hours out, ask for additions by a stated cutoff. After the meeting, run pb-04 on your notes — its output is next week's input. Two playbooks, one flywheel.

Make it yours

• ChatGPT or Claude: keep one ongoing chat (or Claude Project) per recurring meeting — paste each week's minutes into the same thread and the carryover tracking effectively runs itself; ask "what has been open for 3+ weeks?" monthly for an honest aging report.
• Google Docs with Gemini: keep agenda, pre-read and minutes in one running Doc per meeting, newest at top; Help me write drafts the next agenda from the same document it is stored in, and the whole history stays searchable.
• M365 Copilot: ask Copilot in Teams "what happened in [meeting] last week?" to reconstruct minutes you failed to keep, then feed the recap into the step-2 prompt in Word; OneNote or Loop holds the running pack per meeting.
• The monthly variant: for business reviews, add "flag any metric that appears in the pre-read for the third consecutive month without a decision" — recurring INFORM items are where dead weight hides.

Quality check

• Overdue actions open the meetingby name, with dates; accountability is agenda item one, not a footnote.
• Nothing silently droppedevery unresolved item from last time appears, carried or explicitly closed.
• Every item has an owner and a labelDECIDE, DISCUSS or INFORM; a meeting of only INFORM items should be an email.
• The math workstimeboxes plus buffer fit the slot; a 60-minute agenda for a 45-minute meeting is a plan to run over.
• The pre-read stands alonean attendee who reads it can walk in and vote; if it cannot survive without you narrating it, it is not done.