September 4, 2026 · LinkBoard team
Decision notes: the sentence that saves the next meeting
A title tells you what a page is. A decision note tells you why it is still in the folder. Without the second sentence, every link looks equally important, which means none of them are.
Teams reopen debates because the original choice lived in a call. Someone saved the two options. Nobody wrote which one won. Three months later a new person finds both links and reasonably asks, “are we still deciding?” You then spend twenty minutes reconstructing a conversation that could have been one line.
Three fields, even if they fit in one sentence
- Purpose. What question does this URL answer? “Competitor checkout flow for the mobile redesign,” not “interesting.”
- Owner. Who added it, or who still relies on it. “Owner: finance. Do not delete before year-end close.”
- Freshness. When should a human look again. “Review Apr 2027 or when the vendor list changes.”
You can pack those into two short sentences. You should not pack them into a manifesto. If the note needs headings, the decision probably belongs in a proper doc and the link is only a pointer. That is fine — say so: “Full write-up in the strategy memo. This is the source table.”
Examples that hold up
- “Use for Q2 pricing comparisons. Last reviewed Apr 2026. Ignore the enterprise column; we are not in that tier.”
- “Approved vendor list for onboarding. Owner: Finance. Ask before adding a new row.”
- “We picked the left homepage. Poll closed 3 Feb. Right version is archive only.”
- “Primary research source for the client report, chapter 2. Cite as Garcia 2024.”
Notice what they do not say: “great article,” “useful resource,” “must read.” Those phrases are compliments. They are not instructions. A stranger on your team cannot act on a compliment.
When a poll is involved
Run the poll in the same directory as the options. When it closes, do not leave the result trapped in the voting UI. Copy the outcome onto the winning link the same day. Future readers start at the links, not at the ballot history.
If the decision is reversed later, do not silently delete the old note. Add a line: “Superseded 18 Jun — see the new brand kit.” History is how you avoid the same argument in September.
For how invites and polls fit together, read team collaboration. For the client version of this, see the resource hub piece.