The decision is made in the notes
And then somebody retypes it into the system of record, where it slowly stops matching what the room agreed. Here the sentence in the note becomes the record, without leaving the page.
A page that stays current, and is found from the other end
A reference card is not a link. It shows the number now rather than the number at the meeting, and the decision it points at lists every note that discussed it.
Vendor review, 14 March
Attrition in the team handling this contract is the risk we keep coming back to.
Decision DEC-1489
Consolidate vendors onto Northwind
Discussed in
The record is made where the meeting is
Any block becomes a decision record in place. Nobody retypes the sentence into another system, so the record and the room cannot drift apart.
A page knows what it is about
Reference cards to decisions, KPIs, boards and workbooks stay live on the page, and backlinks mean the decision knows which notes discussed it.
It is evidence, not scratch paper
Retention, legal hold, a full audit trail, and a tamper evident seal chain, so a page written in a meeting still stands up years later.
What is actually in it
A notes tool has to survive a year of meetings before any of the governance matters.
Structure that holds a year of meetings
Flat lists of documents collapse at about the fiftieth. This is the structure people already know from OneNote, and it keeps going.
- Notebooks, section groups, sections and pages, nested as deep as the work needs
- Subpages, so a recurring meeting keeps its history without becoming one endless page
- Full text search across every notebook you can see, with the permissions applied first
- Folders and templates, so a recurring agenda starts from the same shape every time
- A page is a free canvas of blocks rather than a rigid document, so it never fights the way you take notes
Fourteen block types, and a pen
Meetings are not paragraphs. They are numbers, diagrams, quotes, actions, and something scrawled while somebody was talking.
- Rich text, headings, lists, checklists, tables, code, math, quotes, callouts, dividers, images, files, audio and embeds
- A slash menu and markdown shortcuts, so the keyboard never leaves the page
- Pen and stylus input with pressure, palm rejection, and a stroke eraser
- Audio capture on the page, kept with the notes it belongs to
- Drag to reorder anything, including into and out of subpages
Wired into the record
A note that only holds text is a dead end. These pages point at the things they are about, and are pointed back at.
- Live reference cards to decisions, KPIs, projects, goals, boards and workbooks, which stay current on the page
- Backlinks, so a decision lists every note that discussed it
- Convert any block into a decision record, keeping the block and gaining a card that tracks what happens next
- Attach a page to a decision as evidence, and it travels with the record
- Everything reachable over MCP, so an agent can read and write notes under the same permissions a person has
Collaboration and the audit trail
Two people typing in the same meeting, and a record that can answer questions about itself afterwards.
- Real time collaboration with presence, on the same conflict free document model as the canvas
- Comments and mentions, with an inbox for what is directed at you
- Version history with named versions and a readable diff
- A tamper evident seal chain, so a page can prove it has not been altered since it was sealed
- Retention schedules and legal hold, applied to notes like anything else on the platform
- A Draft to Official lifecycle that decides what the AI is allowed to cite
A page that points at the work
Reference cards stay live, and backlinks mean the work points back.
Decisions
A block becomes a record, and the record links back to the page.
Canvas
Drop a note onto a board, or open one from a node.
KPIs
A reference card shows the current number, not the one from the meeting.
Agents
Readable and writable over MCP, under the same permissions.
Notes that hold up as evidence
A tamper evident seal chain, version history, retention schedules and legal hold. What was written in the meeting can still be shown to have been written in the meeting.