Moderation Strategies

In freeform debate mode, Council uses a moderator strategy to decide:

1. Which experts speak in what order per round
2. What prompt each expert receives
3. Whether the debate should continue or terminate early

Moderator strategies are pluggable — you can choose the one that fits your deliberation goal.

Why Moderation Matters

Without moderation, experts speak in a fixed order every round (e.g., CTO → CFO → PM → repeat). This works but misses opportunities:

• No amplification of disagreements
• No early termination when consensus is reached
• No targeted follow-ups based on prior turns

Moderators add context-aware orchestration to make debates more efficient and insightful.

Built-In Strategies

Round-Robin (default)

Every expert speaks once per round, in the order they were defined.

When to use: balanced panel discussions where every perspective should be heard equally.

council convene "Topic" --strategy round-robin

Behavior:

• Round 1: Expert A, then B, then C
• Round 2: Expert A, then B, then C
• Stops at maxRounds

Prompt: each expert sees the topic + all prior turns from earlier rounds + turns from the current round so far.

Devil’s Advocate

One expert is designated as the contrarian — prompted to find weaknesses in every other expert’s claims. The rest speak normally.

When to use: stress-test a proposal, surface blind spots, ensure nothing is taken for granted.

council convene "Should we ship the MVP?" --strategy devils-advocate:skeptic

The :skeptic suffix pins the expert with slug skeptic as the adversary. If omitted, Council picks one randomly.

Behavior:

• Each round, non-adversary experts speak first (topic-focused prompts)
• The adversary speaks last, prompted: “Find weaknesses in the arguments above. What scenarios cause these proposals to fail?”

Consensus-Check

After each round, the moderator evaluates whether the panel has converged. If so, the debate terminates early with reason: "consensus".

When to use: avoid wasting tokens when the panel agrees quickly.

council convene "Topic" --strategy consensus-check

Behavior:

• Experts speak round-robin
• After each round, the moderator checks for convergence signals:
  • All experts used the stand-down phrase (“stress-tested”)
  • No new disagreements introduced
  • Synthesis shows alignment

If converged, the debate emits a debate.end event with reason: "consensus" instead of continuing to maxRounds.

How Strategies Work (Implementation)

Moderator strategies implement the ModeratorStrategy interface:

interface ModeratorStrategy {
  planRound(context: ModeratorContext): TurnAssignment[];
  shouldContinue(context: ModeratorContext): boolean;
}

• planRound: returns a list of { expertSlug, prompt } assignments for the round
• shouldContinue: returns true to continue, false to terminate early

Strategies are pure functions — they receive context (experts, round number, topic, prior turns) and return assignments. They don’t call the AI engine or mutate state.

Custom Strategies (Future)

Moderator strategies are not yet user-extensible. To add a custom strategy today, you’d need to:

1. Implement the ModeratorStrategy interface in TypeScript
2. Register it in src/core/moderator/strategies.ts
3. Rebuild Council from source

A plugin system for custom strategies is on the roadmap (Phase 8+).

Structured Mode vs. Freeform Mode

Moderator strategies apply only in freeform mode. Structured mode ignores --strategy and uses the fixed 4-phase choreography (opening → cross-exam → rebuttal → synthesis).

See Deliberation Model for the difference between modes.

Relation to Other Concepts

• Deliberation Model — how freeform and structured modes differ
• Anti-Sycophancy — how devil’s-advocate mode amplifies disagreement
• Context Management — how moderators cap prompt size with rolling summaries