Tool 06 Proposed · looking for a pilot process

The Rapporteur.

Everything was recorded. Nobody ever listened to it again.

AI mode: listening · structures real material with its source linked Phase: during and after Pairs with CDT-10 · Living Decisions Logbook
01The problem

Documentation is the guarantee of a process's legitimacy and, at the same time, its most invisible work: everything is recorded and nothing is consulted.

People forget why what was decided was decided, who was in the room and what was discarded.

The memory of the process lives in the heads of two people. When they leave, the process leaves with them.

In the end someone reopens a topic already worked through and brings the process down.

Without living minutes, every closure is reversible: whoever arrives late and forceful can undo months of work.

Neighbourhoods surveyed over and over for reports that never come back.

What people said never returns in a format they can read. Participating without a report-back teaches that participating is useless.

02How it works

The AI works on what the process already produces, not on what you tell it.

01

It ingests the raw material

Recordings of workshops and assemblies, photos of panels and sticky notes, minutes, chat threads. Transcription and model run locally: the voices of the neighbourhood do not leave the territory.

02

It structures with full traceability

Every decision, every discard and every commitment is anchored to its source: the exact minute of the audio, the page of the minutes, the photo of the panel. What has no source is marked as a gap, never filled in.

03

It returns three objects

The Living Minutes of each session, the Decision Log of the whole process and the plain-language Report-back for those who took part. And all of it stays searchable: ask “why was the pergola discarded?” and it answers with the quotation.

03The result

The Living Minutes: one page per session where every statement has its minute hanging from it. Legitimacy is shown, not argued.

Living Minutes · Co-design session · Cycle 2

14 May · 23 people · 5 new faces

Decided

The play area moves to the north side, next to the shade of the plane trees. ▶ 00:42:15

Agreed after the families' round; no objections in the final synthesis.

The monthly street market keeps its current 12 stalls during the works. ▶ 01:17:02

Verbal commitment from the municipal officer present at the session.

Discarded, and why

Metal pergola on the south corner. ▶ 01:03:40

Maintenance cost affordable only in the first year; discarded after the budget was explained.

Open threads

The watering schedule for the garden: postponed to cycle 3. ▶ 01:44:10

No one assigned as responsible.

Nobody from the shopkeepers' association attended. Second session in a row. no source · gap

Pending: direct contact before the cycle closes.

Searchable afterwards: “why was the pergola discarded?” → it answers with the quotation and the minute, not from memory.

The other two objects: the Decision Log (all the minutes of the process condensed into a searchable timeline) and the Report-back (a plain-language poster for the neighbourhood: what you said, what was decided, what remains open).

04Three rules that are not negotiable

No statement without a source

Every synthesis links to the minute or the original document. What has no source is painted as a gap, in coral.

The audio does not leave the territory

Transcription and model run locally, with open weights. The neighbours' voices train nobody's cloud.

The minutes are validated by whoever facilitates

The AI proposes the structure; the person reviews, corrects and signs it. The minutes belong to the process, not to the machine.

In design · looking for a pilot process

House rule: no tool is fixed in the Toolbox until it has been tested in at least one real process. If you have a process with recorded material piling up, it is the candidate.

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