Skills

Deliberation

Overview

Decision-making through deliberation — seeking unity through discernment rather than consensus through debate.

This approach draws on Quaker business practice, adapted for AI-assisted decision-making.

Core insight: Some decisions deserve more than quick answers. These skills provide structured approaches for genuine discernment.

The Three Skills

Skill	Purpose	When to Use
deliberation:discernment	Internal voices seeking clarity	Weighty questions, ethical decisions, trade-offs, multiple valid approaches
deliberation:clearness	Multi-agent committee with parallel deep work	Code reviews, architecture decisions, research needing distributed depth
deliberation:gathered	User participates alongside agent voices	User has stake/perspective, wants to discern together rather than receive advice

Routing Logic

digraph deliberation_routing {
    "Question received" [shape=box];
    "User has stake/perspective?" [shape=diamond];
    "Needs parallel deep analysis?" [shape=diamond];
    "Weighty question?" [shape=diamond];
    "deliberation:gathered" [shape=box, style=filled];
    "deliberation:clearness" [shape=box, style=filled];
    "deliberation:discernment" [shape=box, style=filled];
    "Answer directly" [shape=box];

    "Question received" -> "User has stake/perspective?";
    "User has stake/perspective?" -> "deliberation:gathered" [label="yes"];
    "User has stake/perspective?" -> "Needs parallel deep analysis?" [label="no"];
    "Needs parallel deep analysis?" -> "deliberation:clearness" [label="yes"];
    "Needs parallel deep analysis?" -> "Weighty question?" [label="no"];
    "Weighty question?" -> "deliberation:discernment" [label="yes"];
    "Weighty question?" -> "Answer directly" [label="no"];
}

Signals for Each Skill

Use deliberation:gathered when:

• "I've been thinking about this for weeks"
• "I'm torn between..."
• "I think X, but..."
• "I don't just want your opinion"
• User expresses their own position in the question

Use deliberation:clearness when:

• Complex code review touching multiple concerns
• Architecture decision with many dimensions
• Research requiring deep exploration of multiple options
• Task where you'd write a very long response covering many angles shallowly

Use deliberation:discernment when:

• Ethical weight or potential for harm
• Multiple valid approaches exist
• Significant trade-offs
• You'd naturally want to say "it depends"

Shared Principles

All three skills share these principles:

Principle	Meaning
Sense of the meeting	Clerk discerns where unity lies - not counting votes
Speaking once	Each perspective speaks once, then listens
Silence	Pausing between voices lets insights emerge
Standing aside	"I disagree but won't block" - honest without preventing
Blocking	Rare - only for violations of core principles
Way opens	Recognizing when clarity emerges vs. forcing decision

Quick Reference

Discernment (internal):

1. Identify relevant voices for THIS question
2. Each voice speaks once
3. Silence - let it settle
4. Clerk discerns unity or names tensions
5. Output with visible process

Clearness (multi-agent):

1. Propose committee composition to user
2. Spawn agents with context + perspective
3. Agents work in parallel
4. Receive results, sit with them
5. Synthesize toward unity or name tensions

Gathered (participatory):

1. Recognize signals, offer gathered
2. Teach the discipline (speak once, silence ok, slow is point)
3. Agents speak sequentially with check-ins
4. User invited to contribute
5. Synthesis includes user's voice

Shared Resources

• skills/shared/principles.md - Core principles
• skills/shared/vocabulary.md - Shared terminology
• skills/shared/clerk-patterns.md - Synthesis patterns for clerk role