In Parallel uses Actions for follow-up work prepared from a meeting and Action Items for structured commitments that need a clear owner. The names are related, but the two surfaces serve different jobs.
Meeting Actions
Open a meeting and select Actions to review follow-ups prepared from that meeting. A meeting Action can include a Changelog proposal such as Publish changes to, an AI handoff, or another supported follow-up from that meeting.
For an AI handoff, select Run with AI and review the audience, destination, and wording before anything is sent or saved.
For a Changelog proposal, review the Publish changes to destination and compare the proposed page changes with the meeting source before publishing.
A meeting Action is reviewable follow-up work. It does not automatically become an owned commitment in the Workspace.
Action Items
An Action Item is a structured commitment captured from a meeting or another Workspace source. It should describe concrete work with one accountable owner and a clear completion condition.
Action Items stay connected to their Workspace and source, so a reader can understand why the work exists. They are different from the detailed delivery tasks your team tracks in Jira, Asana, Linear, or another task system.
Use In Parallel for the commitment and its execution context. Use the delivery tool for subtasks, sprint workflow, and day-to-day implementation detail.
What makes ownership useful
An Action Item holds its meaning when it has:
One accountable owner — “we” or “the team” is not an owner.
A clear completion condition — someone should be able to close it with a definite result.
A connection to what matters — a goal, decision, risk, deadline, or other Workspace context.
A source — the meeting or record that explains why the commitment exists.
Rewrite an item that is too vague to finish, too broad for one owner, or really a project rather than an action.
How ownership surfaces
Home briefings can call out unowned, overdue, or at-risk Action Items and link back to their source records. The Action Item and its source provide the structured context behind those briefing points.
Personal task delegation has been retired. When responsibility changes, update the accountable owner on the underlying Workspace record or in the delivery system that owns the work. Do not treat forwarding a Chat message or AI prompt as an ownership change.