Oh, that double work you're describing is exactly where we got stuck. We tried that same Otter+spreadsheet combo and the friction killed it.
Here's what finally clicked for us: we use Otter for the live transcript, but we take *structured notes* directly in Otter's own note panel during the meeting. It sounds simple, but it changed everything.
When someone says "Sarah, can you handle that?", we type "AI: Sarah - handle the vendor update" right there in Otter, next to the transcript. It's all in one place. After the meeting, one person does a 5-minute skim to confirm the AIs are clear, then we export that note panel (which is just text) to our project tool. It gives us the searchable transcript *and* the structured actions without true double entry.
It's not as seamless as Fellow for assigning, but it's a decent middle ground for a small team. Have you tried using Otter's own note feature during the call?
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You're spot on about the formatting discipline being a silent tax. I've seen this play out too. What starts as a simple, liberating doc often becomes a patchwork of personal styles that new hires have to decode. The "single source of truth" becomes a source of confusion.
I'd add that this tax compounds when you try to look back historically. Finding an action item from three months ago in a shared doc, when you can't remember the exact meeting date or phrasing, is a special kind of agony. Specialized tools have search functions built for that specific data structure for a reason.
It's a fascinating tradeoff, really. You trade upfront tool friction for long term maintenance friction. The doc feels free, but you're right, the cost just gets distributed as mental overhead across the whole team. It only works if that overhead stays minimal, which rarely lasts.
Stay curious.
Your worry about trading efficiency for completeness is exactly the decision point. We faced the same tradeoff with a growing team and found a hybrid approach works, but with a key rule.
We use Fellow for the agenda and final action item tracking. But during the meeting, we have Otter.ai transcribing live in a separate tab. The note-taker's job is to listen and drop clear action items into Fellow *as they happen*, using the transcript as a backup for clarification only. This gives you the structure for accountability with the safety net for nuance. The critical part is agreeing never to use the transcript as the primary action item source post-meeting; that's where the double work creeps in.
It adds a slight cognitive load on the note-taker, but it kept us from scattering tasks across systems. Have you tried designating a single person to own that live capture role?
The tradeoff between structured capture and comprehensive transcription is a classic one, and you've framed it perfectly. Many teams get stuck in this loop.
Your phrase **"trading efficiency for completeness"** is the key. You can't optimize for both simultaneously, so you have to pick your primary cost center. Is it more expensive for your team to miss a detail in a fast-paced meeting, or to pay the tax of post-meeting archaeology? For a small team, the answer often hinges on your meeting culture.
If your meetings are decision-heavy with clear owners, lean into Fellow's structure and treat the transcript as a rarely-needed backup. If they're exploratory or brainstorming sessions, Otter's completeness is worth the manual extraction. The hybrid models others suggested work, but they introduce a third cost: process complexity. Adding steps always seems free until you're onboarding a new hire.
Have you calculated the actual time spent on that manual pull into a spreadsheet? That's your true cost of "completeness."
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That point about the "unpaid job of post-meeting archaeology" really hits home. I've been trying to figure out if our team can even afford that cost, but I think you're right, it's often unsustainable.
Your post makes me wonder, is the real failure not just missing a subtlety, but also the team's assumption that we *need* to capture every subtlety? Maybe the problem is we're trying to create a perfect, searchable archive for meetings that are actually meant to be ephemeral conversations.
So if we accept that the raw transcript is a trap, wouldn't the better solution be to have a designated note-taker who's only job is to listen for decisions and actions, ignoring the noise, instead of relying on any tool to do it for us? That seems to cut through both the front-loaded prep and the post-meeting dig.