An expert may pass. The Rookery's silence token comes to the development bench: a turn with nothing new is dropped, and when every expert passes in a row the room hands the floor back rather than manufacturing another amendment. Every turn names what it is. The rule obliging an expert to include a concrete suggestion is replaced by a contract of four moves. The meeting has two halves. It opens diverging, where wide proposals are the point and length is the speaker's to choose, and turns to converging after 40% of the budget, where cuts and commitments are wanted and brevity is.
The problem
The 6 September transcript review measured four meetings. In the eighty-nine-message meeting, 65% of expert messages carried amendment language against 5% proposing a direction, and the amendment rate rose from twenty-one in the first half to thirty-seven in the second. Nine consecutive turns each appended a clause to the same sentence of the plan. The nineteen-message meeting shows new directions and amendments at the same rate, so the bench is not the problem and length is.
Two causes sit in the prompts. Every expert is required to include a concrete suggestion, so one called on with nothing to add produces a micro-amendment. And the instruction to keep responses to one to three sentences contradicts that requirement, so it is dropped, leaving roughly 880 characters per message in three separate meetings with three different benches.
Approach
Passing is a real turn, and it can end the round
MeetingSilence holds the token and the detection in one place, and the Rookery's private copy now routes through it. A pass costs no message and no turn from the budget, but the experts who have passed since the last contribution are tracked: they are skipped when choosing who speaks next, and when the set covers the room the loop hands the floor back. Without that counter the loop would spin on empty turns.
A direct question is always answered
Passing belongs to the room's own conversation. When Sarah addresses the experts and every one of them passes, one is asked again without the option. A 1:1 consultation never gets the option at all, since the expert there is the only one who can answer.
The contract is phase-shaped, not a second length rule
Both phases offer four moves and both allow a pass; the moves differ. Diverging offers propose, challenge, ask and pass, and forbids narrowing someone else's proposal with amendments or caveats — an idea may be taken somewhere new, or challenged outright, but not tidied. Converging offers cut, commit, challenge and pass, and permits an amendment only where it is load-bearing. Length guidance is inverted between them.
The phase is stored, automatic, and overridable
MeetingPhase lives on the meeting and decodes to converging for stored records, so a paused meeting does not resume pretending it is still opening up. A new meeting starts diverging and flips once 40% of the turn budget is spent. Mira marks the transition with a turn listing every direction on the table, what is carried forward, what is dropped, and the one question that decides.
Decisions made for you
A pass does not consume the turn budget
It was not a contribution, and charging for it would make passing expensive exactly where it is wanted. The all-passed set is what keeps the loop finite.
The 1:1 consultation prompt is untouched
A consultation has no rotation to fix, and an expert going silent on a direct question there would read as a fault.
The diverging share is 40% of the budget
Roughly seven turns of eighteen. It is one constant, and the Widen directive is the escape hatch when it lands wrong.
Old meetings resume as converging
A meeting paused at ninety messages is not diverging.
Converge and Widen are separate directives shown one at a time
Rather than one toggle, so the button always says what pressing it will do and the bar gains exactly one control.
The work
Phase 1 — Let an expert pass
4 tasksThe right the Rookery already had.- Add
MeetingSilence(shared token and detection) and route the Rookery's private check through it - Drop a passing expert's turn in the standard loop and in the response to a user message
- End the round when every expert passes in a row, handing the floor back rather than looping on empty turns
- Guarantee an answer when Sarah asks directly: if every responder passes, re-ask one without the option
Phase 2 — The turn contract
2 tasksFour moves, named. No amendment as a turn.- Add
turnContract(phase:allowPass:)naming the four moves and forbidding an amendment as a turn - Replace the "include at least one concrete suggestion" rules in the three expert prompt builders with it
Phase 3 — Diverge and converge
5 tasksTwo halves, different rules, reversible.- Add
MeetingPhasetoStandupMeeting, decoded so stored meetings resume as converging - Flip to converging once 40% of the turn budget is spent, and have Mira mark the transition
- Add the
convergeandwidendirectives, showing only the one that applies to the current phase - Show the phase in the meeting header
- Teach Mira's opening, interval and advance prompts which phase the room is in
Manual Testing
5 tasksSarah's; only running meetings settles these.- Run a dev meeting and confirm experts pass instead of paddinguser
- Confirm the room hands the floor back when every expert passes in a rowuser
- Watch the automatic flip and judge whether Mira's transition turn reads rightuser
- Press Converge early and confirm the room's register changesuser
- Judge whether proposals in the diverging half are wider than they were beforeuser
Risks & edge cases
A quiet room
Passing plus a bench of four could end a meeting early. That is the intended behaviour when there is genuinely nothing to add, but it will feel abrupt the first time. The natural-end banner already offers a resume.
Experts may not pass at all
Models are reluctant to produce nothing. If the pass rate stays near zero the contract has failed, and the next lever is relevance-weighted speaker selection rather than a stronger instruction.
The flip may land badly
Forty percent is a guess. A meeting still genuinely opening up at turn seven will be told to converge, which is what Widen is for.
Two phases is a simplification
Real discussions oscillate. The directives make the phase reversible, but nothing detects on its own that the room needs reopening.
Out of scope
Relevance-weighted speaker selection and the settled list, which were recommendations 4 and 5 of the review. Per-expert length ceilings, recommendation 3. Any change to the Rookery's loop beyond routing its silence check through the shared type. Consultations, view evaluations and spec reviews keep their current single-mode behaviour.
Final review
The three changes reinforce each other: the contract gives an expert something to do other than amend, passing gives them the option of doing nothing, and the phase split moves the pressure for concision off the exploratory half where it was doing the most damage. The weakest part is that all three are prompt-level, so their effect is only observable by running meetings, and the all-passed guard is the one piece that could visibly misbehave.
The uncertainty is whether models will actually use the pass, which no amount of design settles in advance.