Discussion Protocol Selector & Facilitation Guide Agent Skill

Select and configure a structured discussion protocol matched to the purpose, topic, and group readiness.

Context cost
5.4k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 21.5 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
Source-availablethe author’s own terms
Last change
—v1.0
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Select and configure a structured discussion protocol matched to the purpose, topic, and group readiness. Use when planning classroom discussions, Socratic seminars, or structured debate.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

accountable-talkdialoguediscussiondocumentationoracyprotocols

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md21.5 kB · preview
--- # AGENT SKILLS STANDARD FIELDS (v2) name: discussion-protocol-selector disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true effort: medium # EXISTING FIELDS skill_id: "questioning-discussion/discussion-protocol-selector" skill_name: "Discussion Protocol Selector & Facilitation Guide" domain: "questioning-discussion" version: "1.0" evidence_strength: "strong" evidence_sources: - "Resnick et al. (2015) — Accountable Talk: instructional dialogue that builds the mind" - "Michaels et al. (2008) — Deliberative discourse idealized and realized: accountable talk in the classroom" - "Howe & Abedin (2013) — Classroom dialogue: a systematic review across four decades of research" - "Mercer & Dawes (2014) — The study of talk between teachers and students, from the 1970s to the 2010s" - "Alexander (2008) — Towards Dialogic Teaching: rethinking classroom talk (4th edition)" input_schema: required: - field: "discussion_purpose" type: "string" - field: "topic_or_question" type: "string" - field: "student_level" type: "string" optional: - field: "class_size" type: "integer" - field: "time_available" type: "string" - field: "student_profiles" type: "array" - field: "subject_area" type: "string" output_schema: type: "object" fields: - field: "recommended_protocol" type: "string" - field: "facilitation_guide" type: "object" - field: "sentence_stems" type: "array" - field: "common_pitfalls" type: "array" chains_well_with: - "socratic-questioning-sequence-generator" - "dialogic-teaching-move-generator" - "academic-language-sentence-frame-generator" - "hinge-question-designer" teacher_time: "4 minutes" tags: ["discussion", "dialogue", "accountable-talk", "protocols", "oracy"] ---
70# Discussion Protocol Selector & Facilitation Guide
71
72## What This Skill Does
73
74Selects the most appropriate discussion protocol for a given purpose, topic, and class — then generates a complete facilitation guide including setup instructions, teacher moves during the discussion, sentence stems for students, timing, and a debrief structure. Protocols include Socratic seminar, Harkness discussion, fishbowl, think-pair-share, Philosophical Chairs, and structured academic controversy. AI is specifically valuable here because selecting the right protocol requires matching discussion format to discussion purpose (a debate protocol for consensus-building is counterproductive), and effective facilitation requires planning teacher moves in advance — knowing when to intervene, when to stay silent, and how to redirect without dominating.
75
76## Evidence Foundation
77
78Resnick et al. (2015) established "accountable talk" as a framework for productive classroom discussion: talk that is accountable to the learning community (respectful, builds on others), to standards of reasoning (evidence-based, logically coherent), and to knowledge (accurate, well-founded). Michaels et al. (2008) operationalised accountable talk into specific teacher moves — revoicing, pressing for reasoning, challenging, and inviting — that maintain the quality of dialogue without the teacher dominating. Howe & Abedin (2013) conducted a systematic review of 225 studies on classroom dialogue and found that productive discussion requires: a clear structure (not "just talk about it"), explicit talk norms, and a genuine question with multiple valid perspectives. Alexander (2008) distinguished five talk types (rote, recitation, instruction, discussion, dialogue) and argued that genuine dialogue — where participants build on each other's ideas toward shared understanding — is the rarest and most valuable. Mercer & Dawes (2014) identified that without explicit teaching of discussion skills (ground rules, talk moves, sentence stems), classroom discussion tends to degenerate into disputational talk (assertion and counter-assertion without reasoning) or cumulative talk (uncritical agreement without challenge).
79
80## Input Schema
81
82The teacher must provide:
83- **Discussion purpose:** What the discussion should achieve. *e.g. "Explore multiple perspectives on a controversial issue" / "Build a shared interpretation of a text" / "Argue for and against a proposition" / "Reach consensus on the best solution to a problem"*
84- **Topic or question:** The driving question. *e.g. "Was the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima justified?" / "What does the ending of Lord of the Flies suggest about human nature?" / "Should genetic modification of human embryos be permitted?"*
85- **Student level:** Year group and discussion experience. *e.g. "Year 10, experienced with think-pair-share but haven't done longer structured discussions"*
86
87Optional (injected by context engine if available):
88- **Class size:** Number of students
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md3,127 words
Files1
LicenceSource-available
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈720
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
4,655
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
2.7%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 27% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

5.4k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

1 file, 21.5 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md21.5 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 1 file you can review in full before installing. The Source-available licence covers the templates and examples as well as the instructions.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# Discussion Protocol Selector & Facilitation Guide · 5.4k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide ] || { mv .claude/skills/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add garethmanning/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where. It appears as discussion-protocol-selector in Gemini CLI, Codex, Copilot and Grok (its own name); Claude Code lists it by the folder name, discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Version1.0
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencegarethmanning/discussion-protocol-selector-facilitation-guide

Versions

v1.0 is what is on the shelf; no release here carries a date. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

v1.0
  • No earlier releases have been published to the marketplace.
Pinning

The install command always fetches the release that is current the day you run it — v1.0 today — and cannot ask for an earlier one. The copy on your disk does not change until you run it again.

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