One table · four moves · Beta
The Negotiation Room.
Four tools that share a table. Practice the call before you have it. Unstick the one term that has been stuck for three drafts. Split the package when ten issues are open and neither side can walk. Keep the book while a contract moves for months. Each takes structural inputs, shows its work in your browser, and asks an AI briefed by Stephen Brownell for one thing at the end. Start where the deal is.
Practice it
Practice the negotiation before you have it
Counterparty — The Negotiation Gym
A negotiation gym. Read a briefing, sit across from an AI counterparty, play three rounds, and get a graded scorecard with the Veteran’s Note on what a 40-year GC would have done at your seat.
- What leaves your browser
- Everything you type at the table, to generate the reply and the scorecard. The scenario is fictional; never type real client facts.
- The AI step
- Every turn is a call. A reply usually takes ten to thirty seconds; the scorecard about a minute. Nothing is stored, and the match is kept in your tab only.
- You take away
- A scorecard across seven dimensions, a table card, and a post to challenge a colleague.
Unstick it
Break the deadlock on one stuck term
Excursion — The Deadlock Breaker
A Synectics session on the term: purge the compromises everyone has already proposed, leave the line through a springboard, borrow a mechanism from another field, and force it to fit.
- What leaves your browser
- Only the ids of the options you picked: positions, fears, constraint bands, springboards, mechanisms, and the purge list. No free text reaches the service.
- The AI step
- One call, the force fit. Usually under a minute, sometimes two. Nothing is stored.
- You take away
- Three to five structures off the line, each with a kill line; a Third Option memo in Word; a Round 2 offer to play at the Counterparty table.
Split it
Split a package of open issues so both sides can sign
Cleave — The Deal Splitter
Ask what the deal is for on Monday, price the open issues in points, then run the Cut alone or the Sheet with both sides, and write the letter so the counterparty reaches the conclusion on its own.
- What leaves your browser
- Point values and names never travel. The delivery step sends issue ids, rungs, outcome ids, and the profile and decision style you picked.
- The AI step
- One call, the letter. Usually under a minute. The engines that cut the package run in your browser with the work shown.
- You take away
- The cut or the sheet with the arithmetic shown, a sealed point sheet, a letter under three hundred words, and the Split memo in Word.
Keep the book
Keep the book on a contract in motion
Ledger — The Negotiation Risk Ledger
Every risk term scored in a band per round against the floors you set, the movement in dollars, what you gave and what you got, and for every open term the three lanes for the next move.
- What leaves your browser
- Drafts and redlines are read in your browser and never uploaded. The Next Move review sends term ids, band indices, floors, and the contract-price band only.
- The AI step
- One call, the Next Move review. Usually under a minute, sometimes two. Nothing is stored.
- You take away
- The heat map and trade ledger on screen, a ledger file you keep and reopen when the next draft lands, and the memo in Word.
How the moves hand off
The four were built to pass work to each other. Nothing travels between them except what you carry across: an offer, a residual issue, a term that will not move.
- Excursion → CounterpartyThe Round 2 offer Excursion writes is shaped to be played at the Counterparty table, so a structure found off the line gets tested against an opponent before it goes out for real.
- Cleave → ExcursionCleave hands the residual, the one issue still stuck after Monday, the sheet, and the engine, to Excursion with its poles already filled.
- Ledger → ExcursionA term Ledger marks as stuck for two turns can be taken to Excursion for a structure the drafting argument has not found.
- Cleave and LedgerBoth work the same solar EPC agreement from the owner’s seat: Cleave prices the ten open issues at contract stage, Ledger scores sixteen risk terms as the drafts move, so the split and the book describe one deal.
The three deals on the table
Three deals carry the room’s scenarios. More are being written; the release list hears first.
The Meridian credit call
Counterparty · Excursion
An EEI master with a Collateral Annex, 150 MW around the clock and three years to run. The parent is downgraded below the threshold, forward prices have moved against you, and the buyer’s credit desk wants a $20 million letter of credit in three business days. Counterparty puts you at the table; Excursion works the performance-assurance demand as the stuck term.
The Sable margin call
Counterparty
An ISDA Master with a Credit Support Annex behind a 100 MW wind hedge the lender required. Two weeks of heat move the curve against you and the dealer’s collateral desk wants $14 million of Eligible Credit Support by close of business tomorrow, with a number the Annex does not quite produce. Counterparty puts you on the call.
The distributed-solar EPC
Cleave · Ledger · Excursion
A fixed-price engineering, procurement, and construction agreement for a distributed solar portfolio, negotiated from the owner’s seat. Cleave prices the ten open issues at contract stage and cuts the package; Ledger scores sixteen risk terms round by round and quantifies the movement against the contract price; Excursion works the delay-damages cap when it sticks.
Every fact in all three deals is fictional. Point values, contract text, prices, and party names stay in your browser; the tools send ids and bands, never the deal.
Words used at this table
The room has a small vocabulary. Each word is marked in the tools with a dotted underline; hover or tap it there for the same one-line meaning.
The vocabulary loads with the page.