Clariox · Call recaps
How to write a call recap that actually gets read.
Three things, quoted and dated: what was decided, who owns what by when, and what the call raised but never answered. Send it the same day, while the room still remembers itself.
The short answer
A recap that gets read is short, specific, and honest about gaps. It has three sections and nothing else: decisions, quoted rather than paraphrased; commitments with a named owner and a date, or an explicit "nobody" and "no date" when that's the truth; and open questions the call raised without closing. Send it within the hour, before the details soften into an impression.
Why most recaps don't get read
The common failure mode is length. A recap that narrates the whole call — who said what, in what order, with context — reads like a transcript, and transcripts get skimmed once and archived. The version that gets read weekly is the one that answers a single question fast: what do I need to do, and by when. Everything that doesn't serve that question is cut.
The second failure mode is politeness. A recap that rounds an unclear moment into something tidy — assigning an owner nobody actually claimed, picking a date that was only "maybe" — looks more finished and is worth less. The gaps are the useful part. A recap's job is to surface them while they're still cheap to close, not to paper over them.
What goes in each section
Decisions
Quote them. Not "we agreed to move the budget" but the actual sentence — "budget is CHF 18'000 not 24'000." Paraphrase drifts; six weeks later the argument is about the words, and only a quotation survives that argument.
Commitments
Every action gets an owner and a date, or it gets neither — never a guess at either. "Unassigned" and "Date unknown" are more useful than a filled-in field that isn't true, because a false owner looks handled and never gets chased.
Open questions
Anything raised and not resolved. This is the section most recaps skip, and it's usually the one that matters most six weeks later.
Built from real notes
Forty-five minutes, five commitments, one open question.
Notes typed during the call, the way they actually get typed — abbreviations and all.
call w/ Marta + Dev (Ardent) — thu they hate the new hero, "too cold", want warmer photography Marta: legal needs to see the "clinically proven" claim before anything ships ?? Dev asked about the media plan AGAIN — we still owe them the split by channel launch before the 14th, Marta said maybe the 12th
- Rework hero art direction — warmer photography
- Route the "clinically proven" claim to legal for sign-off
- Send the media plan with channel-level split
Open — the input doesn't answer this
Is the launch date the 14th or the 12th? Both were said on the call.
Send it the same day
The value of a recap decays fast. Correcting a misremembered detail on the day of the call costs one line in a reply. Correcting it three weeks later, once it has become "what we agreed," costs a much harder conversation — the one this whole site is about.
Common questions
Recaps that hold up later
What should a call recap actually include?
Three things and nothing padded around them: decisions made, quoted in the words that were used; commitments with an owner and a date, or an honest 'unassigned' and 'date unknown' when the call didn't produce one; and open questions the call raised but didn't answer. Anything else is colour, not record.
How soon after the call should it go out?
Same day, ideally within the hour. Memory of a call degrades fast on both sides, and the value of a recap is highest while everyone would still recognise the moment it's describing. A recap sent the next morning has already lost some of what made it useful.
What if nothing was actually decided on the call?
That's still worth sending. A recap that says plainly 'no decisions, three open questions, here they are' prevents the far more common failure: both sides walking away assuming something was settled when it wasn't.
Isn't this just meeting minutes?
Minutes usually record what was said. This records what was decided, by whom it's owed, and what's still open — a smaller, sharper document built to be acted on rather than filed.
Your next call is in a few hours.
Paste the notes straight after and get the recap back in the format above — decisions quoted, owners named or left honestly blank, nothing smoothed over.