How to write a question worth arguing about
EchoSwarm asks you one thing: what do you want to argue about. What you put in that field decides how good the run is, more than anything else in the app. The characters argue from what you gave them and from nothing else.
Thin in, thin out
This is not enough to argue with:
Should I fire someone?
Nobody in the room knows who, where, what it costs, or who else is affected. Five characters will still talk for twenty-five turns, and every one of them will be guessing.
This is enough:
I run a nine-person design studio in Zurich. One senior designer misses deadlines, and he holds the only relationship with the client who pays 40% of our revenue. Two juniors have told me they will leave if nothing changes. I can afford one month of overlap if I hire now.
Same decision. The difference is that now there is something to disagree about — the client relationship against the two juniors, the cost of waiting against the cost of moving.
Four things to put in
- Name the place. A studio in Zurich argues differently from a studio in Izmir, and the room knows that.
- Name the people and say what each of them wants. Not roles — wants. "Two juniors who will leave" is a position; "my team" is not.
- Say what has already happened. The complaint that was already made, the deadline already missed, the message already sent.
- Say what it costs you to get this wrong. This is the one people leave out, and it is what makes the room take a side instead of listing options.
Three more, as people actually type them
My sister wants to move our mother into a care home near her in Izmir. I want her to stay in the flat with a day nurse. Mum says she is fine. Our brother pays nothing and agrees with whoever spoke to him last.
The neighbour below us has complained twice about our kids on the balcony after 8pm. The building rules say quiet hours start at 10. He has now written to the landlord. We share a stairwell and I have to live next to him for years.
We charge 29 EUR a month for scheduling software sold to small clinics. Churn is 4% a month, almost all of it on accounts with fewer than five seats. Our largest competitor moved to usage-based pricing in June. We have eleven months of runway.
None of these asks a question. They describe a situation with a fault line running through it, which is the thing a room can actually pull on.
What to expect
A vague question does not fail. That is the trap. It fills all twenty-five turns and circles, and the verdict comes back as thin as the question was. Thin output is the symptom to read backwards.
The graph redraws every turn, so an alliance shows up as a line between two characters before anyone says it out loud. You can scrub back to any turn and watch it form.
What this is not
A run is a simulation. The characters are generated by AI. They are not experts, they know nothing about your situation beyond what you typed, and nothing they say is the opinion of a real person. EchoSwarm does not predict what will happen. It is not a lawyer, a doctor or a financial adviser.
Use it to find the argument you had not thought of, then go and check it.
Free and paid
| Free | Paid — $14.99/month | |
|---|---|---|
| Characters | 5 | up to 50 |
| Turns per run | 25 | 50 |
| Runs | 3 a day, 30 a month | 1,000 a month, no daily limit |
| Export a run | — | yes |
Both tiers use the same language model. What the paid tier buys is capacity, not a different or better model. It renews each month until you cancel, and you can cancel any time in your store account. Need more inside a single month: 1,000 or 2,000 extra runs can be added as a one-time purchase, and added runs do not expire.
Every line of dialogue is generated by AI, and a report button sits in every session.