For engineering managers: the trade-off you didn’t write down is the one you’ll relitigate
Two of an engineering manager’s meetings matter months later and neither survives in the record. The design review produces a decision with no memory of what it was decided against. The ceremony produces a status update with no memory of how many times this blocker has already appeared. Donna reads each with the lens it deserves and keeps both ledgers for you.
What this job loses without a real record
- The architecture decision is in someone’s head, the alternative that lost is in nobody’s.
- A blocker has been “almost resolved” for three standups and no artefact counts the appearances.
- Scope shrank between planning and review without the word “descope” ever being said.
The sections that earn their keep here
Each technical decision with the alternative that was weighed — and a flag when none was, plus which choices are reversible and which the team just married.
Risks separated by how they were treated: acknowledged and planned, or raised, laughed about and moved past. The second list is the one that ages badly.
Who is stuck, since when, and how many meetings this blocker has now attended — counted from Donna’s memory of previous sessions, not from your recollection.
The lens that fits
The Architect — Technical decisions, trade-offs, and the risks everyone waved away. Design discussions, architecture reviews, debugging huddles, and engineering deep dives — anything her first pass classifies as technical. Donna selects it from the meeting itself, so nobody has to remember to switch modes.
The meetings behind it
Questions, answered straight
Do I need a GPU or a beefy server to run this?
No. The heavy models are reached over API with keys and budgets you control; the machine only needs to run a browser and a database, which is the class of server teams already rent for small production apps.
Can Donna turn a design review into an ADR?
The Architect lens produces the raw material of one — decision, alternatives considered, trade-offs, risks, owners — exported as Markdown, which is usually a paste and a trim away from the ADR you would have written.
Does it distinguish standups from architecture sessions automatically?
Yes. The first analysis pass classifies the meeting type and routes it to the matching lens; you can also pin a lens or re-read any session through a different one afterwards.
Put Donna in your next meeting
Access is open — sign in with your Google account and she’s in your dashboard in minutes. Rolling out to a whole team, or want a hand with the server setup? We’re glad to help.