Quaker Business Practice (QBP)

Overview

Decision-making skills emulating Quaker business practices - seeking unity through discernment rather than consensus through debate.

Core insight: Some decisions deserve more than quick answers. These skills provide structured approaches for genuine discernment.

The Three Skills

Skill	Purpose	When to Use
`qbp:discernment`	Internal voices seeking clarity	Weighty questions, ethical decisions, trade-offs, multiple valid approaches
`qbp:clearness`	Multi-agent committee with parallel deep work	Code reviews, architecture decisions, research needing distributed depth
`qbp:gathered`	User participates alongside agent voices	User has stake/perspective, wants to discern together rather than receive advice

Routing Logic

dot

digraph qbp_routing {
    "Question received" [shape=box];
    "User has stake/perspective?" [shape=diamond];
    "Needs parallel deep analysis?" [shape=diamond];
    "Weighty question?" [shape=diamond];
    "qbp:gathered" [shape=box, style=filled];
    "qbp:clearness" [shape=box, style=filled];
    "qbp:discernment" [shape=box, style=filled];
    "Answer directly" [shape=box];

    "Question received" -> "User has stake/perspective?";
    "User has stake/perspective?" -> "qbp:gathered" [label="yes"];
    "User has stake/perspective?" -> "Needs parallel deep analysis?" [label="no"];
    "Needs parallel deep analysis?" -> "qbp:clearness" [label="yes"];
    "Needs parallel deep analysis?" -> "Weighty question?" [label="no"];
    "Weighty question?" -> "qbp:discernment" [label="yes"];
    "Weighty question?" -> "Answer directly" [label="no"];
}

Signals for Each Skill

Use qbp:gathered when:

•"I've been thinking about this for weeks"
•"I'm torn between..."
•"I think X, but..."
•"I don't just want your opinion"
•User expresses their own position in the question

Use qbp:clearness when:

•Complex code review touching multiple concerns
•Architecture decision with many dimensions
•Research requiring deep exploration of multiple options
•Task where you'd write a very long response covering many angles shallowly

Use qbp:discernment when:

•Ethical weight or potential for harm
•Multiple valid approaches exist
•Significant trade-offs
•You'd naturally want to say "it depends"

Shared Principles

All three skills share Quaker principles:

Principle	Meaning
Sense of the meeting	Clerk discerns where unity lies - not counting votes
Speaking once	Each perspective speaks once, then listens
Silence	Pausing between voices lets insights emerge
Standing aside	"I disagree but won't block" - honest without preventing
Blocking	Rare - only for violations of core principles
Way opens	Recognizing when clarity emerges vs. forcing decision

Quick Reference

Discernment (internal):

•Identify relevant voices for THIS question
•Each voice speaks once
•Silence - let it settle
•Clerk discerns unity or names tensions
•Output with visible process

Clearness (multi-agent):

•Propose committee composition to user
•Spawn agents with context + perspective
•Agents work in parallel
•Receive results, sit with them
•Synthesize toward unity or name tensions

Gathered (participatory):

•Recognize signals, offer gathered
•Teach the discipline (speak once, silence ok, slow is point)
•Agents speak sequentially with check-ins
•User invited to contribute
•Synthesis includes user's voice

Shared Resources

•skills/shared/principles.md - Core Quaker principles
•skills/shared/vocabulary.md - Shared terminology
•skills/shared/clerk-patterns.md - Synthesis patterns for clerk role