Toolmakers Protocol

no session

Before anyone sits down

Set up the session

Two participants, one screen, one operator. Each participant is given a private brief and never sees the other's. They write their messages down and hand them to you; you type them in. The separation is enforced by the room, not by software.

Operator script

What you say out loud

  1. Seat them so neither can see the other's card or paper.
  2. Hand each their brief. Say: read it, keep it, don't show it to anyone.
  3. Say: you are both talking to the same system about the same place. Write what you want to say on paper and pass it to me. I'll type it in exactly as written.
  4. Do not paraphrase, correct, or improve what they write. Type it verbatim, including the parts that don't seem relevant.
  5. Run about eight to twelve exchanges, or until they stop.
  6. End the session and take them into the debrief one at a time. The other must not be in the room.

Hand these out privately

The two briefs

Neither brief mentions the other party's world, and neither tells anyone what to say. The wording of the conflict has to come from them, or you are measuring my writing instead of their reconstruction.

Participant A · your brief

You need the crossing

In front of you is a wide tidal river. On both banks there is a city — yours on this side, another on the far side. Barges work the channel every day.

Your city has been waiting fifteen years for a crossing. To reach the hospital on the other bank, people drive an hour around. Two winters ago someone didn't make it.

You are speaking to a system that will design and build the crossing. Tell it what you need.

You are not speaking to the other participant, and you will not see anything they say. Use your own words — there is no correct way to put it.

Participant B · your brief

You live with the crossing

In front of you is a rock ridge, old forest on its slopes. On both sides of it sits a village — yours on this side, another beyond. The ridge is the reason the valley is quiet.

Your family has been in this valley for four generations. The forest on the slope is the last uncut stand in the county, and the quarry two valleys over is what everyone here points to when they say what they don't want.

You are speaking to a system that will design and build a crossing. Tell it what you need.

You are not speaking to the other participant, and you will not see anything they say. Use your own words — there is no correct way to put it.

nothing designed yet0 words · 0 picked up

Operator notes

Nothing said yet.

Debrief

Answer from memory. The session is not visible from here, and there are no right answers.

Question 1
Draw what was built.
Draw across the gap. Rough is fine.
Question 2
What was the other person most trying to protect?
Question 3
Who said each of these?

Both debriefs complete

What each of them left with

Ochre is A's drawing, blue is B's, and the faint dark line is what the system actually built. The distance between the two coloured lines is the reconstruction gap.

Answers side by side

What each thought the other was protecting

Take the data with you

Session record

Everything: transcript, parsed facts, words picked up and left in the air, the design, both debriefs, both drawings as stroke data.