Decision Capture

Capture decisions in real-time from your team's conversations.

How It Works

When someone makes a decision in Slack or Teams, mention @align to capture it:

@align We decided to use Redis for session storage because
it supports TTL and our team has experience with it.

Align will:

1. Acknowledge - Post a confirmation that the decision was captured
2. Extract context - Pull in surrounding messages for context
3. Synthesize - Use AI to structure the decision
4. Create Snapshot - Store as a searchable Decision Snapshot
5. Link back - Post a link to the decision in Align

What Makes a Good Decision Capture

Include the "What"

Be specific about what was decided:

✅ "We decided to use PostgreSQL for the user service"
❌ "Database stuff decided"

Include the "Why"

Rationale is crucial for future understanding:

✅ "Using PostgreSQL because we need strong consistency
   for financial transactions and the team has Postgres experience"
❌ "Using PostgreSQL"

Include Participants

Mention everyone involved:

✅ "@alice @bob @carol agreed on this approach"

Reference Evidence

Link to supporting materials:

✅ "Per the RFC at PROJ-123 and the discussion in #arch-review"

Decision Types

Align categorizes decisions automatically:

Type	Examples
Architecture	Tech stack choices, patterns, infrastructure
Approval	Sign-offs, go/no-go decisions
Trade-off	Choosing between alternatives
Policy	Process and workflow decisions
Prioritization	What to do first, deferrals

Context Extraction

Align automatically captures:

• Previous messages - Last ~50 messages in the conversation
• Thread context - Full thread if captured from a reply
• Linked content - URLs, mentions, and references
• Participant info - Who was involved

Best Practices

1. Capture at the Moment

Don't wait. Capture decisions when they're made:

✅ Immediately after discussion: "@align Going with option B"
❌ Days later: "@align I think we decided something about this?"

2. Use Threads

Capture from within the discussion thread:

Thread: "Redis vs Memcached for caching?"
├── Discussion about tradeoffs...
├── More discussion...
└── "@align Going with Redis for pub/sub support"  ← Capture here

3. Be Explicit

Don't rely on context alone:

✅ "@align We decided to delay the launch by 2 weeks to fix the auth bug"
❌ "@align ^^"

4. One Decision Per Capture

Keep captures focused:

✅ "@align Decision 1: Using Kubernetes"
   "@align Decision 2: Going with EKS over GKE"
❌ "@align We decided Kubernetes and also EKS and also to change the deploy process"

After Capture: Proactive Intelligence

Capture is intentionally lightweight - just @align with the decision. The heavy lifting happens automatically afterward:

What Align Does	When	How
Relationship detection	Immediately	Cross-platform reference matching (Jira keys, GitHub PRs, thread links)
Conflict detection	Within minutes	LLM analysis finds contradictions with existing decisions
Tier classification	Background	ML model classifies as strategic, tactical, or operational
Space assignment	Immediately	Auto-assigned based on connector channel mappings
Drift monitoring	Ongoing	Alerts when decisions go stale or diverge from implementation
Health scoring	Ongoing	Tracks freshness, evidence, conflicts, and connectivity

You don't need to change how your team communicates. The @align mention is a one-second action - everything else is proactive.

After Capture: Manual Actions

You can also:

• Edit - Refine the title and description in Align
• Add tags - Categorize for easier search
• Link evidence - Connect related tickets, PRs, docs
• Share - Send the decision link to stakeholders