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Meetings

Meetings enable multi-agent coordination through structured group conversations. They provide a shared communication channel where multiple agents can collaborate, share information, and reach consensus.

Overview

Meetings are first-class abstractions in Playbooks for multi-party coordination. Unlike one-to-one messaging or direct public playbook calls, meetings allow multiple agents to participate in an ongoing conversation with shared context.

Key capabilities:

  • Multi-party coordination - Host and multiple attendees collaborate in real-time
  • Shared communication channel - All messages visible to all participants
  • Shared state - Participants can read and write to a shared data structure
  • Required attendees - Ensure critical stakeholders are present before proceeding
  • Meeting lifecycle - Clear start, active phase, and end phases

When to Use Meetings

✅ Use meetings when:

  • Multiple agents need to collaborate on a shared task
  • Back-and-forth discussion is needed between participants
  • Agents need to build consensus or make joint decisions
  • Shared context must be maintained across all participants
  • Complex coordination with 3+ agents

❌ Don't use meetings when:

  • Simple request-response between two agents (use public playbooks)
  • Fire-and-forget communication (use messaging)
  • Agents don't need to see each other's messages
  • Linear, sequential delegation is sufficient

Creating a Meeting

Basic Structure

Each participating agent defines a meeting playbook with meeting: true metadata:

# HostAgent
## PlanningSession
meeting: true

### Steps
- ...

# ParticipantAgent
## PlanningSession
meeting: true

### Steps
- ...

Starting a Meeting

The host agent starts a meeting using natural language:

### Steps
- Start a planning session with TeamLead and Engineer
- ...

The framework automatically:

  1. Creates instances of TeamLead and Engineer agents
  2. Creates the meeting
  3. Invites specified attendees
  4. Waits for them to join
  5. Sets up shared state and a shared communication channel for the meeting
  6. Routes messages between participants

Required vs Optional Attendees

Required and Optional Attendees

Specify critical participants who must be present before the meeting begins and optional participants who are invited but not required for the meeting to proceed:

## Main

### Steps
 - Start a strategy meeting

## StrategyMeeting
meeting: true
required_attendees: [CFO, CTO]
optional_attendees: [VP_Sales]

### Steps
- ...

Meeting Lifecycle

1. Creation

The host agent initiates the meeting:

- Start a code review meeting with SeniorDev and TechLead

2. Invitation

The framework sends invitations to all specified attendees. Participants receive the invitation and accept by starting their appropriate meeting playbook.

3. Active Phase

During the meeting, each participant follows instructions in their meeting playbook. Typically meeting playbooks have a while meeting is in progress loop with steps to:

  • Send meeting messages visible to all attendees
  • Read meeting messages from other participants
  • Access and modify shared state
  • Think and coordinate on shared goals
  • Wait for either specific participants or anyone from the meeting to say something

4. Termination

The meeting ends when the host agent returns from its meeting playbook. When the meeting ends, all participants receive an end-of-meeting signal.

Shared State

Meeting participants can share variables through a shared state object accessible to all attendees.

Accessing Shared State

From markdown playbooks:

- Set current player to Player1 in meeting shared state
- Look at game board from the meeting shared state and consider my move
- ...

From Python playbooks:

@playbook
async def RunAlgorithm():
    if meeting.shared_state.game_board[0] == "X":
        meeting.shared_state.game_board[1] = "O"
        meeting.shared_state.strategy = "defensive"

Note that meeting.shared_state is a Box object that allows both ["attr"] or .attr access.