Ten issues are open, neither side can walk, and every draft is read as tilted. Cleave asks what the deal is for on Monday morning, prices the open issues in points, cuts the package so the cutter is indifferent and the other side chooses — or, when both sides will play, runs Adjusted Winner on two sealed sheets — and then writes the letter so the counterparty reaches the conclusion on their own. Point values never leave your browser.
Pick the package type and your side. Then confirm which issues are still open. Each issue carries its two poles — the position each side has taken — and is numeric, laddered, or binary. The engine assumes value moves in a straight line between the poles; where it does not, you move the rung later and the scores are reprinted.
Three sources, one premise. When bargaining strength is roughly equal, leverage tactics tend to cost more than they win. What is left to win is three things, and each source owns one.
Divide and choose is the oldest fair-division procedure there is: one side cuts so that it is indifferent between the pieces, the other chooses, and for two parties each believes it got at least half by its own lights. Adjusted Winner (Steven J. Brams and Alan D. Taylor, 1996) is the two-party procedure that, on sincere point sheets over independently valued issues, is envy-free, equitable, and efficient, splitting at most one issue. Both engines here are public and deterministic.
Solution-focused brief therapy (Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, Milwaukee, from 1978) supplies the questions that find out what each side wants the deal to do — the miracle question, scaling, exceptions — borrowed as questions, not as a stance. Chase Hughes supplies the message architecture: two true facts, the conclusion never stated, so the reader draws it and owns it. The only facts the letter uses are facts about the procedure, which the reader can check.
Full spec, dataset, worked example and sources: CLEAVE-METHOD.md.
Cleave is a drafting aid and a thinking discipline, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is formed by using it. Cleave and everything it produces are not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Both engines run in your browser. The delivery step sends only enumerated ids — package type, mode, the package as issue ids mapped to a side or a rung, outcome ids, profile, decision style, conclusion, and two scale readings — to Settingstone's service, which is rate-limited and stores nothing. Point values and party names never travel. The package composition sent discloses how ten open issues on some EPC somewhere came out; it does not disclose whose.
The miracle question, put to a deal. Six months after substantial completion, if the contract did what it was for, what is true? Pick for your side from what you know. Pick for the counterparty only what it has actually said, in meetings and drafts — guesses are marked as guesses. The engine then sorts the issues by what serves which Monday.
For each open issue: has this mechanism already been agreed somewhere the counterparty accepts? An issue with an exception is in reach, and should be closed on the exception before points are spent on it.
Where is the deal today, zero to ten? Recorded before the engine runs so the result is measured against it, not against how you feel afterward. The two numbers are never compared with each other; each is compared only with its own later reading.
One hundred points across the open issues: how much of what the deal is worth to you sits on each issue, never what the issue costs in dollars. Write it sincerely — your true relative values, as if the other side's sheet would never be seen. Three checks run as you type. Only the sum blocks; the other two warn, and none changes your sheet.
Only your sheet exists. The engine will cut the open issues into two bundles worth exactly half your points each and, among all such cuts, send the one that hands the counterparty the most on your estimate of its ranking. Order the counterparty's issues below, most important to it at the top. It is seeded from Monday's picks and it is a guess; the screen and the memo say so. The guess cannot hurt you: it only picks among cuts that are already equal for you.
Solution-focused, on the result. Where is this package, zero to ten, for your side, and — your estimate — for the counterparty? Each is compared only against its own baseline. The equitable score from the engine is not a scale reading and is never shown as one. Then: what would move it one point?
The score, by your own points, below which you walk. Set here, before the letter is written, and carried into the memo so you can see later whether you held it.
The only screen that leaves the browser. The Worker receives enumerated ids — never a point value, never a name — and returns a letter under three hundred words built on two facts about the procedure, with the conclusion never stated, plus the framing, an objection map, the residual, and the Veteran's Note. Names are filled in here, after the letter comes back.
Used once, after the deal is signed. Enter where every issue actually landed. The engine scores it against your sheet and, if the Sheet was used, against both; runs the swap test; asks the regret question; and, where two sheets are open, looks for a package both sides would score strictly higher than the one signed.
The C&I PPA at term-sheet stage. The site lease. The MIPA indemnity package. One email when each lands — nothing else.
The letter, framing, objection map and Veteran's Note are generated from enumerated selections only and are a drafting aid, not legal advice or a recommendation for any actual transaction. You own every word of the letter and carry the duty of truthfulness for it; read every sentence before it leaves. No attorney-client relationship is formed. Cleave and everything it produces are not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Adjusted Winner's properties are properties of the procedure under its stated conditions, proved by Brams and Taylor, not results this tool delivers in any deal. Built and maintained by Settingstone Legal — the operational tool chest for energy attorneys.