# Agent Debate Protocol

> Have agents argue opposing positions from the same evidence, then synthesize, so the strongest case for each option is heard before deciding. Use when a decision is genuinely contested and one agent's answer would hide the trade-off.

- Skill: `amey-thakur/agent-debate-protocol` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add amey-thakur/agent-debate-protocol`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/amey-thakur/agent-debate-protocol/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: AI & ML
- Author: Amey-Thakur (https://skillmd.com/u/amey-thakur)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/amey-thakur/agent-debate-protocol

---


# 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

1. **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.
2. **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.
3. **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.
4. **Run at least one exchange.** Opening statements alone are parallel
   monologues; a rebuttal round is where weak arguments are exposed.
5. **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).
6. **Require the synthesis to state the losing case's strongest
   point.** If it cannot, the debate was not real.
7. **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).