Prompt of the Week ยท Level 2

The Pattern Pass

One meeting's notes tell you what was said. A month of them tells you what keeps not getting decided.

Last week's prompt read one meeting and told you what changed. This one reads a month and shows you the pattern underneath all of them.

Any single meeting can look fine. It's only across a month that you can see the same open loop showing up four times, or the same person quietly holding every commitment nobody else can carry.

That's not a memory problem either. It's a visibility problem, and it only shows up at the scale of a month, not a meeting.

01What it looks for

Find 1

What keeps coming back

Discussed three or more times, never decided. Quoted, not summarized, so you can see it circling.

Find 2

Who is overloaded

The name attached to the most commitments. Counted, not guessed.

Find 3

Commitments that died

Given a date, that date passed, nobody mentioned it again.

Find 4

The decision you keep deferring

The one thing that would unblock the largest number of open loops.

02The prompt

Paste into Claude Code, Cowork, or Codex 
Before you do any work, ask me these one at a time and wait for each answer:
- Where do my meeting notes live?
- Can you reach my calendar for the same month, so you know which meetings
  happened and who was in them?
- Are there transcripts you can read as well?

Then pull every meeting from the last month yourself. Do not ask me to
gather them. If a source is out of reach, say which one and carry on with
what you have, but tell me what the gap costs.

Do not summarise them. I want the pattern, not the content.

Tell me:

1. WHAT KEEPS COMING BACK - anything discussed in three or more meetings
   without being decided. For each one, quote the shortest line from each
   time it appeared, so I can see it circling.
2. WHO IS OVERLOADED - the person whose name attaches to the most
   commitments. Count them.
3. THE COMMITMENTS THAT DIED - anything given a date that has passed with
   no later mention. List them plainly, with the date.
4. THE DECISION I KEEP DEFERRING - the one thing that would unblock the
   largest number of open loops. Name it and tell me how many it unblocks.
5. MY MEETING TAX - how many hours of meetings produced no decision. Take
   the hours from my calendar, not from an estimate.

Rules:
- Count what is written. Never estimate a number you cannot point at.
- If two notes contradict each other, show me both and say which is later.
- End with one uncomfortable observation about how I run meetings.

03How to run it

  1. Answer the three questions properly before it starts. A source it can't reach costs you nothing if you say so up front. A source it guesses at costs you the whole read.
  2. Let it pull the raw notes. Typos, fragments, half sentences. The mess is the data, not a problem to fix first.
  3. Read finding four first. It's usually the one that explains why the other three exist.
  4. Take the one uncomfortable observation at the end seriously. That line is the point of running this monthly instead of after every meeting.

Run this monthly, not after every meeting. A single meeting can't show you a pattern. A month can. The value here is in the repeat, not the one-time read.

Want a machine that runs this automatically, every month, and drops the read in your inbox? Send it to leo@onetimeautomation.ai. A real person reads every one, and if it's something you could set up yourself in an afternoon, we'll tell you that instead.

Recommended: Claude Code, Cowork, or Codex. This prompt works best in an AI agent that can reach your tools, rather than in a chat window. It reads a month of your notes and your calendar, not just what you paste in.