Amey-Thakur Agent debate protocol
Asking one agent for a recommendation gets you a confident answer with its counterarguments buried. Debate surfaces them by construction: advocates argue their assigned side properly, and the synthesis has to account for both rather than for one.
Method
- Fix the options before the debate. Two or three concrete positions. Advocates argue the given options; letting them invent new ones mid-debate turns argument into brainstorming.
- Assign sides, and require genuine advocacy. Each agent argues its position as strongly as the evidence permits, including where the evidence is thin. Balanced advocates produce mush.
- Give every advocate the same evidence. Differences should come from interpretation, not from information asymmetry, or the debate is decided by who was told more.
- Run at least one exchange. Opening statements alone are parallel monologues; a rebuttal round is where weak arguments are exposed.
- Have a separate synthesizer. Not one of the advocates, since an advocate cannot fairly weigh its own case (see agent-pricing-committee for a worked example).
- Require the synthesis to state the losing case's strongest point. If it cannot, the debate was not real.
- End with a recommendation and its conditions. What would have to be true for the other option to win, which is what makes the decision reviewable later (see agent-decision-log).
Boundaries
Debate clarifies trade-offs; it does not produce truth, and a confident advocate can win an argument the evidence does not support. It costs several times a single query, so reserve it for consequential and genuinely contested decisions. Humans decide; the pack is an input (see agent-human-checkpoint).