skill tutorial · scenario
Run a conflict session with your agent
A conflict session is high-stakes and paperwork-heavy: confidential brief cards, a tally per side, debrief questions you must not improvise. That paperwork is exactly what an agent should carry, so you can spend your attention holding the room. Here is the loop for the conflict category.
What the agent does — and what it must not
The agent reads each folder's SKILL.md and its confidential briefs, sequences the exercises to your time and headcount, prints the cards into separate piles, and hands you the debrief sheet. What it does not do is decide which conflict to open or whether the room is safe enough for roleswap. Those are the facilitator's calls. The agent clears the prep so you are not shuffling paper while a live disagreement goes cold or hot. If you want the method behind the set, the conflict resolution guide explains what each one teaches.
Hand it the temperature of the room
Conflict folders are chosen by how hot the dispute is, so lead with that in the brief:
the brief
> conflict session, 8 people, 2 hours. The dispute is real but cooled > down; I want a safe opener, then one exercise that moves them > from positions to interests. Shortlist conflict folders; do not > pick anything that needs the room to concede live.
Let it read the briefs and shortlist
The agent filters the conflict skills and checks each one against the temperature you gave it:
conflict candidates
curl -s https://workshopskill.com/en/skills.json | jq -r ' .skills[] | select(.category=="conflict") | [.name, .group_size, .duration_minutes, .setting] | @tsv' # The Orange (simulation) and The Third Story (post-hoc, names off) # fit a cooled dispute; Roleswap does not — it needs a safe room
Install, print confidential cards, prep the debrief
Once picked, the agent installs and — the key step for conflict — prints the briefs into separate piles so neither side sees the other's hidden need:
the set
for s in the-orange the-third-story escalation-map; do curl -LO https://workshopskill.com/en/activities/$s/files/$s.zip unzip -o $s.zip done # agent then prints: confidential brief cards (separate piles per side), # one shared artifact per pair, debrief sheet — nothing spoils the reveal
The Orange's folder is the positions-versus-interests core; The Third Story is the safest opener for a dispute nobody will name. Run them in that order and the room moves from "what a camera saw" to "what each side actually needs" — the debrief does the rest.
keep going
questions
Is it safe to hand a real conflict to an agent?
The agent does not touch the conflict — it handles the clerical side of running a session about it. It reads each folder's brief, sequences the exercises, prints the confidential cards and tallies, and prepares the debrief questions. The judgement calls — which dispute to open, whether the room is safe enough for roleswap, holding the frame so it does not escalate — stay entirely with the human facilitator. The agent removes prep friction; it does not mediate.
Which conflict folders are for a live dispute versus a simulation?
The Orange is a simulation — confidential brief cards, two parties of two to four, safe to run before anything is actually hot. Same Boat and Roleswap Argument ask each side to give something up, so they need a cooled-down or low-stakes disagreement. Escalation Map and The Third Story are built to run on a real dispute after the fact, with names kept off the wall. Tell your agent the temperature of the room and it will shortlist accordingly.
Do the confidential brief cards stay private?
Yes — that is a design point, not a caveat. The Orange ships each side a different confidential brief so neither knows the other's hidden need until the debrief; the agent prints them into separate piles per the folder's print order. Nothing about the setup spoils the reveal, which is the whole teaching moment of the positions-versus-interests lesson.