A protocol is the runnable half of a method spec: a facilitation method written as a portable, forkable spec, with its stages, roles, facilitator prompts, and what carries from one stage to the next. Fork it, adapt it to your context, and run it on any capable runtime. Harmonica is the reference runtime.
Each protocol below lives as a full spec in the method-specs registry, paired with weval-style evals (one per stage) that say whether it ran well. Each carries its own licence and attribution. Specs stay draft until an experienced practitioner of the method has reviewed the prompt wording.
Protocols
Nine methods are published in the registry. All are CC0 unless noted.
- Appreciative Inquiry: a strengths-based 5-D cycle (affirmative topic, positive core, dream, design, action) so change grows from what already gives the group life. (after Cooperrider and Srivastva.)
- Consent Decision-Making: a group decides on a proposal by seeking objections and adopting what is good enough for now and safe enough to try until the next review. (after Sociocracy 3.0.)
- Dynamic Facilitation: choice-creating on a hard, open question, with every contribution drawn out and charted to four shared boards so the group reaches breakthroughs by emergence rather than forced agreement. (after Jim Rough.) Full write-up.
- Focused Conversation (ORID): four levels of question (Objective, Reflective, Interpretive, Decisional) so a decision rests on shared facts, surfaced reactions, and considered meaning. (Institute of Cultural Affairs, Technology of Participation.)
- Governance Meeting: a recurring, consent-based team meeting assembled from Sociocracy 3.0 building blocks (it composes Navigate via Tension, Proposal Forming, and Consent Decision-Making). (after Sociocracy 3.0.)
- MosaicLab Deliberation: a citizens’-deliberation chain that takes a small mixed group from a clear remit, through balanced information, to recommendations refined to an 80% comfort threshold. (CC BY-NC 4.0; adapted from MosaicLab’s Facilitating Deliberation.) Full write-up.
- Navigate via Tension: people surface the tensions they feel in relation to the organization and name the ones that point to a real driver worth responding to. (after Sociocracy 3.0.)
- Proposal Forming: a divergent-then-convergent sequence (understand the driver, gather constraints and resources, surface requirements, generate ideas, then tune them into one coherent draft) that designs a proposal to fulfil a purpose. (after Sociocracy 3.0.)
- Retrospective: a team looks back over a period of work, makes sense of what happened, and decides a small number of concrete improvements to try next. (after Sociocracy 3.0 and Agile Retrospectives.)
The spec format is settling; see FORMAT.md in the registry.