Socratic Debate Plugin

Conduct structured multi-perspective debates using 4 specialized AI subagents to stress-test ideas and reach well-reasoned conclusions.

Overview

This plugin provides a deliberation framework inspired by Socratic dialogue, where multiple perspectives systematically examine an idea before reaching a verdict. It's particularly useful for:

• Evaluating PR review feedback
• Making architectural decisions
• Weighing technology tradeoffs
• Any situation where "it depends" is the initial answer

Installation

claude plugin install socratic-debate@plinde-plugins

Usage

Command

/socratic-debate <topic or question>

Examples

/socratic-debate Should we fix Copilot's suggested change before merging?
/socratic-debate Is it worth refactoring to use dependency injection?
/socratic-debate Should we adopt Kubernetes for this workload?

How It Works

Phase 1 (parallel)              Phase 2 (sequential)
┌─────────────────┐
│  FOR Agent      │──┐
└─────────────────┘  │
┌─────────────────┐  │      ┌─────────────────────┐
│  AGAINST Agent  │──┼─────▶│  Scribe/Moderator   │───▶ Final Output
└─────────────────┘  │      └─────────────────────┘
┌─────────────────┐  │
│  NEUTRAL Agent  │──┘
└─────────────────┘

The Four Perspectives

Output Format

The Scribe/Moderator produces a polished markdown summary:

## Socratic Debate Summary

### Topic
[The question being debated]

### FOR (Proponent)
[Key arguments summarized]

### AGAINST (Devil's Advocate)
[Key counterarguments summarized]

### NEUTRAL (Analyst)
[Key tradeoffs identified]

### Points of Agreement
[What all perspectives agreed on]

### Moderator's Verdict
**Recommendation:** accept/reject/modify/defer
**Confidence:** low/medium/high
**Key Factor:** [The decisive consideration]

Contents

socratic-debate/
├── plugin.json
├── README.md
├── commands/
│   └── socratic-debate.md    # The /socratic-debate command
└── skills/
    └── socratic-debate/
        └── SKILL.md          # Debate framework and guidelines

Use Cases

PR Review Deliberation

When evaluating whether to accept reviewer feedback:

/socratic-debate Should we address the reviewer's suggestion to add error handling?

Post the resulting debate summary as a PR comment to document the reasoning.

Architecture Decision Records

Use the debate output as the "Considered Alternatives" section of an ADR:

/socratic-debate Should we use event sourcing for the order management system?

Technology Evaluation

When choosing between options:

/socratic-debate Should we migrate from REST to GraphQL for our mobile API?

License

MIT