A summary helps a reader remember the conversation, while a decision log preserves the specific records needed to confirm what changed and who accepted the next action.
Use the summary for orientation
A meeting summary compresses themes, updates, and notable exchanges so an absent reader can understand the conversation quickly. Avoma and Fireflies both sell automated transcripts, summaries, and action-item features, which shows that teams already pay for this layer. The compression is useful, but it may combine proposals, decisions, and follow-up ideas into prose that no longer exposes their different operating states.
A decision log is narrower. Each row needs a decision statement, effective date, named decision maker or approver, source citation, affected work, and current status. A commitment row separately needs the person who accepted it, the promised result, a due or review date, and confirmation status. The structure makes missing ownership more visible than a fluent paragraph does.
Preserve later changes instead of rewriting history
Recurring meetings often revisit an earlier choice. The register should link the new decision to the row it supersedes, state the effective date, and retain both citations. Deleting or editing the old sentence can make later work look irrational because the reader can no longer see which plan was active when someone acted. An append-only state history preserves that sequence.
Reality Contact, LLC installs Decision Custody Ledger for an agreed meeting series. The buyer supplies authorized records and chooses the ownership rules. The service validates citations and prepares confirmation queues, while participants decide whether the interpretation is accurate. It does not replace consent, meeting governance, employment policy, or professional advice about a dispute.
Where the service stops
Reality Contact, LLC organizes permissioned records and installs a ledger workflow, but does not secretly record meetings, determine legal obligations, monitor employees, resolve disputes, accept commitments for participants, or certify that a transcript captures every relevant fact. The buyer confirms the record, assigns unresolved owners, corrects source-linked ambiguities, approves the task import, and chooses whether the register becomes the authority used at the next review. This is document preparation and operational workflow installation. It does not provide legal, employment, financial, or professional advice. The buyer supplies permissioned records, confirms the ledger, controls participant access, and decides how any decision or commitment is used.
Sources: Avoma published meeting-intelligence features and plans; Fireflies published transcription and action-item plans.