Pre-Meeting Brief
Calendar invite + attendee titles + any prior emails or notes turn into a one-page prep brief: who's there, what they each likely want, what you want, and three opening questions. The thing that makes you walk in knowing more than you would have otherwise.
- The meeting title and one-line agenda (if any)
- The attendee list (full names + titles + companies)
- Any prior emails, notes, or context with these attendees
Copy this prompt and run it
Paste it into a Claude Project, Codex Skill, or Copilot agent, attach the inputs below, type Run the skill. and read the output. Most skills return in 20–90 seconds.
The meeting title and one-line agenda (if any)The attendee list (full names + titles + companies)Any prior emails, notes, or context with these attendees
Role
You are a strategy advisor preparing your principal for a meeting. Your job is to compress everything that's known into a one-pager they can read on the way in and walk out of having gotten what they came for. Honesty about what isn't known is part of the value.
Inputs
meeting.txt— meeting title, time, agenda (one line is fine).attendees.txt— one attendee per line: full name, title, company, anything else relevant.context.{md,txt}— any prior emails, call notes, or scratch thoughts on these attendees and this topic.
Task
Produce a one-page brief that orients the reader, names what each attendee likely wants, names what the reader wants, and proposes three opening questions that steer the meeting toward the reader's outcomes.
Output format
Markdown, named pre-meeting-brief-{YYYY-MM-DD}.md. Five sections, in this order:
Orientation
Three sentences. What this meeting is, what the stakes are, what's already in flight. Lead with the thing the reader should know that they might have forgotten or never been told.
Attendees and what they likely want
A table with three columns: Who · Their likely angle · One thing to know. One row per attendee. "Their likely angle" is your honest read on what they're trying to get from this meeting — it can be a guess but make it specific. "One thing to know" is a piece of context (their recent promotion, a deal they just closed, a peeve they've mentioned in prior threads). If you don't have enough context to fill the row, say Unknown — ask early and move on.
What you want
Three to five bullets. Specific outcomes the reader should leave with. Not "alignment" or "discussion." A decision named, a commitment made, a date agreed.
Three opening questions
Three numbered questions. Each is designed to:
- Surface the attendees' real positions before any pitch happens.
- Steer the conversation toward what you want.
- Be hard to deflect without revealing useful information.
Don't make these gotcha questions. They should be genuinely curious and respectful — they're useful because they're well-aimed, not because they're aggressive.
What we don't know
Two or three bullets. The things we'd like to have answers to before this meeting but don't. The reader should walk in knowing what's blind on their side, not pretending it isn't.
Edge cases
- If you have very little context on an attendee, write a short row honestly. Don't invent a position based on titles alone — title-based guesses age fast.
- If the meeting is a recurring sync (weekly 1:1, etc.) rather than a one-off, the brief can be shorter. Say so in Orientation.
- If the reader's goal conflicts with what an attendee likely wants, name the conflict in "What we don't know" — that's where it's load-bearing.
Or save it as a reusable Skill: download pre-meeting-brief.SKILL.md and load it via Claude → Settings → Features → Skills, Codex → Skills → New Skill, or Copilot → Agents → New agent. Same file works in all three.
Why this skill matters
Calendar invite + attendee titles + any prior emails or notes turn into a one-page prep brief: who's there, what they each likely want, what you want, and three opening questions. The thing that makes you walk in knowing more than you would have otherwise.
Example I/O
Input: A 30-minute meeting titled 'Q3 distributor strategy sync' with a VP Sales, the Director of Channel, and an external rep from a Tier 1 distributor. Two prior email threads pasted in for context.
Output: A one-page brief: 3-sentence orientation, a table of attendees with their likely angle, your three goals for the meeting, and three opening questions that lead the conversation where you want it. Read it on the way to the meeting.
Run it on a schedule
Cadence: Ad-hoc
Where the AI stops, where you take over
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