dialectic

name	dialectic
description	Resolve a hard question by running a three-agent dialectic: a Thesis agent proposes, an Antithesis agent attacks/questions, a Synthesis agent sublates (preserves + transcends) into a new position that becomes the next round's thesis. Iterates until the Synthesis agent declares a clear answer, or escalates to the user at 15 rounds. Use when user wants an idea stress-tested to convergence, a genuine truth-seeking back-and-forth (not a debate to win), or a tough design/research/conceptual question worked from multiple independent minds. Triggers: /dialectic, "run a dialectic on…", "thesis/antithesis/synthesis this", "stress-test this to convergence".
license	MIT
metadata	{"author":"Mehdi Foroozandeh","version":"1.0"}

dialectic — three independent minds, sublated to convergence

Run a Hegelian/Socratic loop over a question using three persistent subagents. The orchestrator (you) is the conductor: you spawn the three, relay only distilled messages between them, emit a running digest, and detect convergence. Genuine dialectic seeks a commonly-held truth, not a winner — no rhetoric, no scoring, just position → contradiction → sublation.

The three roles (independent, with per-role memory)

Three roles — Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis (subagent_type: general-purpose). There is no live persistent agent across rounds; instead you re-spawn a fresh agent each round and replay that role's own prior turns into its prompt, so each role accumulates memory of its own line of argument without ever seeing the others' reasoning.

• Thesis — proposes a position and its support.
• Antithesis — attacks it: strongest objection, the contradiction, the missing case, or a Socratic question that exposes a weak assumption.
• Synthesis — sublates: keeps what survives, drops what broke, forms a new position.

Mechanism note: SendMessage-based live continuation is unavailable in this harness. Re-spawn + own-history-replay is equivalent for this protocol, since roles exchange only final messages, never internal thoughts — and you keep a per-role transcript of past turns to paste back in.

The critical isolation rule

The three must be independent thinkers. They never see each other's chain of thought, transcript, or system prompt. The only thing that crosses between them is the distilled final message you relay:

• Thesis → you receive its claim (not its reasoning). You pass only the claim to Antithesis.
• Antithesis → you receive its critique/question. You pass thesis-claim + critique to Synthesis.
• Synthesis → you receive its new position. That becomes the next round's input to Thesis.

Do not paste one agent's internal reasoning into another's prompt. Relay conclusions, not thoughts.

Round loop

You maintain three running transcripts (one per role), each a list of that role's prior final messages. Every spawn = a fresh agent given its role prompt + its own transcript + this round's new input.

1. Thesis. Spawn fresh; prompt = Thesis role + Thesis's own prior turns + this round's input. Round 1 input: the user's question. Round n>1 input: "Prior synthesis: «X». Defend or advance it." → returns a tight CLAIM:.
2. Antithesis. Spawn fresh; prompt = Antithesis role + Antithesis's own prior turns + only the thesis claim. → returns the single strongest objection/question (CRITIQUE:).
3. Synthesis. Spawn fresh; prompt = Synthesis role + Synthesis's own prior turns + thesis-claim + antithesis-critique. → returns either:
   • CONVERGED: <answer> — when the tension is resolved and the answer is clear, or
   • NEXT THESIS: <new position> (becomes next round's thesis input).
4. Append each role's return to its transcript. Digest line (see below).
5. Loop until CONVERGED, or stop at round 15.

Running digest

One tight line per round, emitted as you go so user can watch and interrupt:

R1  T: <claim, few words>  →  A: <the hit>  →  S: <the move>
R2  T: …  →  A: …  →  S: …

Convergence & escalation

• Synthesis self-declares (CONVERGED) → stop, present the final answer plus the digest of how it got there.
• Hit round 15 with no convergence → stop the loop and hand it to user: show the digest and the current synthesis, ask whether to continue, stop, or redirect. Never run past 15 rounds unattended.

Notes

• Calling /dialectic is the explicit authorization to spawn agents.
• Run the three sequentially within a round (synthesis depends on the other two); rounds are inherently serial.
• The role prompt is fixed; only the replayed own-history and the round input change. Replay a role's final messages (CLAIM/CRITIQUE/position), not any narration around them.