async-decision-memo

Async Decision Memo Skill

Remote teams keep reinventing this badly: someone posts a doc, twelve people leave drive-by comments over two weeks, nothing resolves, and the decision happens in a meeting anyway — now with resentment. The async decision is a process with a deadline, not a document with comments enabled. This skill runs the whole protocol.

What This Skill Produces

• The decision memo (structured for silent reading, with the recommendation up front)
• The process wrapper: named roles, response windows, comment-resolution rules, escalation
• The kickoff message that opens the window and the closing note that records the outcome

Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):

• The decision — what's being decided, the options, the recommendation and its reasoning (rough notes fine)
• The people: who decides (one name), who must be consulted (their objection could change the answer), who is merely informed
• The clock: when is this decision needed, and what does it block
• The stakes — reversible or one-way-door? (Sets the window length and the bar for escalation)

The Protocol

1. Write the memo for a silent first read. Structure: the decision needed (one sentence) · the recommendation (up front — burying it invites a treasure hunt) · context in prose (full sentences force complete thinking; bullets hide gaps) · options considered with real trade-offs (a strawman option list discredits the whole memo) · what would change my mind (the single highest-trust section — name the evidence that would flip the recommendation) · cost of deciding slowly (why the deadline is real). Target ≤2 pages; past that, the memo needs editing, not more patience.
2. Assign the three roles by name. The decider (exactly one; "the group decides" is how nothing does) · consulted (listed individually — their silence is treated as consent and they know it) · informed (get the outcome, not a comment invitation). The role list ships in the kickoff, not in anyone's imagination.
3. Open a bounded window. Reversible decisions: 2-3 working days. One-way doors: up to a week, never more — an async process longer than a week isn't deliberation, it's drift. The kickoff states the close date/time and timezone, and that silence from consulted = consent.
4. Enforce the comment protocol. Comments must be one of: objection (with reasoning — and where possible, what evidence would resolve it) · question (answered by the author within a working day) · improvement (accepted/declined by the author, no debate thread). Preference restatements and drive-bys get one reply: "noted — not an objection." Threads longer than 3 exchanges move to a 15-minute call between those two people only, whose outcome is written back into the thread.
5. Close on time, whatever the state. At the deadline the decider: decides (the default) · extends once with a reason and new date · or escalates (only for an unresolved objection on a one-way door). The closing note records: the decision, the dissent as stated by the dissenter, what would reopen it, and who does what by when. Dissent recorded ≠ decision reopened — disagree-and-commit is the exit, and the note says so.
6. File it. The memo + closing note land where decisions live (the decision log, the [Brain's](../professional-brain/SKILL.md) decisions/ if one exists) — an async decision that lives in a chat scrollback will be relitigated by someone who "never saw it."

Output Format

Async Decision: [title] — window closes [date, tz]

Roles: Decider: [name] · Consulted: [names] (silence = consent) · Informed: [names]

The memo (structured per the protocol above)

Kickoff message (ready to post): [what's being decided, the recommendation exists — read before commenting, the window, the comment protocol in two lines, silence rule]

Closing note template: Decision: […] · Dissent, as stated: […] · Reopens if: […] · Actions: [who/what/when] · Filed: [where]

Quality Checks

• [ ] Exactly one named decider; consulted people listed individually
• [ ] The recommendation appears before the context, not after it
• [ ] "What would change my mind" names specific evidence, not humility theatre
• [ ] The window has a date, time, and timezone; the silence rule is stated in the kickoff
• [ ] The closing note records dissent verbatim and the reopen condition

Anti-Patterns

• [ ] Do not open comments without the protocol — an unbounded comment section is the meeting you were avoiding, slower
• [ ] Do not run a memo without a decider — consensus-by-exhaustion is not an outcome
• [ ] Do not let threads run past 3 exchanges — two people arguing in a doc are holding everyone else hostage
• [ ] Do not extend the window twice — the second extension means the memo was premature; withdraw and rewrite it
• [ ] Do not soften recorded dissent into "some concerns were raised" — the dissenter's actual words, or the record is fiction