Verian can be added to a Microsoft Teams meeting the way you would add a colleague. The first thing it does is say what it is: an AI assistant, not a person, listening through the meeting's live captions. The next thing it does is nothing, until someone says its name. This post explains the three rules behind that behaviour and why we chose them.
Rule one: it answers only when named
A meeting is a conversation between people. An assistant that interrupts to correct a figure, or that summarises unasked, changes that conversation into something else. So Verian waits. Someone says “Verian, what is driving the risk on mechanical completion?” and it answers that question, out loud and with the figures on screen. Nobody says its name, it stays quiet. “Verian, stop” and “Verian, leave” work for anyone present, not only the person who invited it.
Rule two: it answers with the asker's access
The planner can see the schedule. The cost engineer can see the cost. Not everyone in a review can see everything, and the meeting did not change that. When Verian answers a question in the room, it answers with the access of the person who asked, and it says so. In a group chat where a question would reveal figures that some members cannot see, it says that too, and answers the asker privately.
This is the rule that took the longest to get right, because it is the one that is easiest to get wrong in a way nobody notices until it matters.
Rule three: it answers from the record
A figure Verian gives in a meeting is computed by a tool from the project record: the schedule revision, the risk register, the letter it was read from. The language model writes the sentence; it does not invent the number. Every answer names its sources, so the person who asked can open them after the meeting and check.
In practice this means Verian will sometimes say “I do not have that in the record” rather than guess. We think that is the right behaviour for anything that is going to be quoted in a review.
What it does not do in the room
Verian does not write minutes, does not store the captions it listens to, and does not change anything in the project from inside a meeting. Anything that would change the project, a proposed risk, a schedule recovery, goes to the person with the authority to approve it, after the meeting, on the record.
An assistant in a meeting should make the people in the room better informed, not make the room bigger.
- Named: it speaks when asked, and anyone can tell it to stop or leave.
- Access: it never shows a person more than that person may see.
- Record: figures come from tools and name their sources.