Meetings

mdBoard treats human meetings as decision gates, not calendar events. A meeting exists because a state cannot move without a human decision.

The agent tracks the gates and reminds you. It does not schedule calendars, send invitations or decide for you.

The meeting catalog

The weekly and release cadences are configurable defaults. The on-demand gates are records.

Fixed versus on-demand

Fixed meetings give the human system a rhythm:

• the weekly consortium review keeps pitches and roadmap selection from piling up;
• the release train makes nightly → stable a deliberate, regular event.

On-demand meetings are triggered by work:

• breakdown clarification when the agent has questions;
• handover review when a batch is ready;
• recovery when something is blocked or failed.

A fixed meeting is not a pending record; the board shows the next occurrence and the agenda. An on-demand meeting is a record with a status.

How the agent reminds you

A gate stays pending until a human accepts, defers or dismisses it. The agent must surface it:

Agent: One gate needs you:
          breakdown clarification for #0007, due today.
          Two questions about the streaming boundary.
          Say “open the clarification” to review them, or “defer” to
          move the reminder.

A deferred gate keeps its status and gets a new reminder date. A dismissed gate is closed with a reason. The agent never silently drops a gate.

Consortium review

Subject: pitched ideas and roadmap selection.
Goal: decide what enters the roadmap.
Attendees: owner, members, the agent for notes and actions.

Agenda:

1. Read each pitch (one paragraph).
2. Ask the agent for the history or the cost implication.
3. Decide: accept, reject, or request changes.
4. Select accepted batches for the roadmap up to the limit.

The owner records the decisions through the agent. The agent moves the cards and captures the authorisation.

Breakdown clarification

Subject: the open questions from a batch in breakdown.
Goal: make the work startable without guessing.
Attendees: the intent owner, the agent, optionally a reviewer.

The agent opens the meeting with a list of questions. You answer in chat; it records the answers and accepts the gate. The batch cannot move to doing until this gate is accepted and no questions remain.

Handover review

Subject: a completed batch.
Goal: accept the outcome or request changes.
Attendees: one or more independent reviewers, the owner.

The batch is in handover. Review the whole batch, not individual tasks:

• intent and acceptance criteria;
• evidence and tests;
• report draft;
• risks and out-of-scope items;
• cost estimate versus delivery.

Reviewers can work in parallel. The owner makes the final accept. Changes return the batch to doing and create rework tasks.

Release readiness

Subject: the release train from nightly to stable.
Goal: decide that the accumulated accepted work is releasable.
Attendees: owner and maintainers.

The agent prepares:

• the changelog for the release window;
• the merge check;
• the release notes.

The owner executes the release. The agent does not.

Recovery and conflict review

Subject: a blocked batch, a failed task or a merge conflict.
Goal: decide recovery, reassignment or cancellation.
Attendees: the intent owner, the agent, the owner if needed.

Examples:

Agent: #0009 is blocked on a missing credential. Return state: doing.
          Options: unblock after the credential is provided, or cancel.

Agent: There is a conflict in a card file. I reconstructed the timeline
          from the event journal. Two states are plausible. Please decide.

The agent stops writing and asks; it does not resolve a ground-truth conflict by itself.

How to respond to a gate

The agent records the decision and briefs you on the new state.

What if you ignore a gate?

The gate stays pending. The agent reminds you in every board brief. Work that depends on the gate does not proceed. That is the point: the process is blocked by a human decision, not silently bypassed.

A week with a agent

A typical rhythm:

This is a rhythm, not a rule. The gates are what matter; the cadence can be changed in configuration.

Next

• Review and acceptance
• The board
• Branches and releases