Justify My Meeting

Is a meeting justified?

Have a meeting coming up? Paste the invite or describe what happens. Justify My Meeting looks at the goal of the meeting and whether having everyone there at the same time is the best use of everyone’s time. Then it tells you whether to keep it, shorten it, fix it, or replace it with something better.

See what Justify My Meeting gives you

Real output from an actual run on the meeting below. Part of the result is shown; nothing is reworded.

The meeting

Weekly engineering all-hands. Standing 60-min meeting, 22 attendees. Agenda: "Status updates from each team lead." No prep, no decisions — everyone reports out what they did last week. Recurring for 6 months. Context: I am one of the team leads. I speak for about 90 seconds and listen for the rest.

Real run, 2026-10-08 — one of the tool's own built-in examples.

Verdict: Make it async

Sixty minutes of synchronized listening is not a meeting — it is a podcast with worse production values.

What weakens the case

• Status reporting as described is one-directional; a written summary can carry the same information without requiring 22 people to be free at the same time
• No decisions means the meeting produces no output that required everyone present

What would make it worth keeping

• Whether cross-team questions, escalations, or coordination actually happen during the updates — that would materially strengthen the case
• If team leads surface blockers or dependencies during their updates and others respond in real time, that coordination could benefit from live exchange — back-and-forth on a dependency is faster than a thread when timing is tight

A better format

Each team lead posts a short written update before end of day Monday — what shipped, what is blocked, what needs another team. Anyone who reads something requiring a conversation flags it and schedules a targeted sync with only the people needed. Team leads would actually read each other's updates; if that is not reliably true, async fails and a shorter, discussion-only meeting may be needed instead.

In a Nutshell

When

A meeting is on the calendar and you are not sure it deserves to be.

You give

The invite, or a description of what actually happens. Duration and headcount if you know them.

You get

A verdict — keep it, shorten it, fix it, or make it async — with the reasoning, what would change the verdict, and what to send. Then an agenda if it should happen, or the message if it should not.

The edge

It weighs whether being in the room at the same time is what the goal actually needs, instead of grading the meeting on vibes.

Good to Know

• Describe what actually happens, not what the invite claims — that is where the answer usually lives
• Duration and headcount are optional, but supplying them is what makes the time footprint real rather than guessed
• 'Anything else that matters?' is where context belongs — who is not invited, what was already decided, who is not speaking to whom
• A NOT ENOUGH TO TELL verdict is a real answer: it tells you what is missing rather than guessing
• Some meetings genuinely earn their hour. A tool that never says 'keep it' would not be worth consulting.

Questions people ask

Should this meeting be an email?

If it only moves information one way — status updates, announcements — a written update usually works. Keep the meeting when people need back-and-forth: decisions, disagreements, blockers that need several people at once.

How do I suggest cancelling a recurring meeting?

Propose a time-limited trial rather than a cancellation: replace it with a written update for four weeks and see whether anything important gets lost.

What verdicts can it give?

Whether the meeting earns its time, needs fixing, or would work better async — with the reasons, what it doesn't know, and an agenda or message to send.