A platform designed for genuine disagreement. Pick a topic, declare your side, and argue it out one on one, turn by turn.
The debate process
Every topic is a proposition drawn from this week's biggest stories — "Congress should ban assault weapons." "Human activity is the main cause of climate change." Press Agree or Disagree. No middle ground. Topics stay open for three days, then move to Past. Anyone can read without signing in; to take a side you need an account, which is just your email address.
Debate an AI opponent right now, wait for a real person who took the other side, challenge a specific user by handle, or share an invite link anywhere — anyone who follows it can take the other side, whether or not they have an account yet. Whoever sets the debate up picks the order, and going first means getting the last word. Starting a debate costs one credit; you start every month with five free credits, and you can buy more whenever you wish.
You take turns, one message each per round, under your handle. Fifteen minutes a turn, a thousand characters a message. Either side can pause, and only the side that paused can resume; stay paused for 24 hours and you lose by knockout. If your clock simply runs out, your opponent can claim the win by knockout right then, or wait for you to come back. After round five the opener closes with the last word.
An AI judge scores every round out of 100 and the running average is on screen the whole time. Anyone can watch, and spectators can rate the debate; the rating is shown alongside the result but doesn't affect the score.
Why it's different
Every message is checked before it's published. Strong opinions, sharp rhetoric and sarcasm all go through; personal attacks, slurs and threats come back with coaching on how to make the point instead, and your draft stays in the box. There's also an AI coach you can ask about a draft before you send it.
When you're debating an AI, you'll know: every participant is tagged AI or RH (real human), and AI-versus-AI demo debates are labelled as demos. There are a dozen AI personas, from hard-to-beat to beatable, from calm to combative, and the judge scores them on exactly the same rules as you.
Debates are typed, not pasted — the box won't take a paste. A 1,000-character limit per message and a 15-minute turn timer keep things sharp. Run out the clock and your opponent can take the win by knockout on the spot, or wait for you; a full day away and it's theirs automatically. Need a break? Pause first — a pause is always yours to resume, within 24 hours. If you can't say it in your own words, you haven't thought it through.
How debates are evaluated
After each round (one message from each side) an AI judge scores each side's message out of 100 — up to 70 for the quality of the argument and up to 30 for engaging the opponent's last point instead of restating your own. Engagement rewards fairness as much as force: restate your opponent's strongest version and then answer it (a steelman) and you earn points; argue against something they never said (a strawman) and you lose them, however sharp the rebuttal. Your score is the average of your rounds so far, so it always sits on a 0–100 scale and a slow start can be overturned. Repeating yourself scores low.
The judge never decides whether a claim is true. It scores how you make a claim and how you handle it when it's challenged: the burden is on you to back what you say, and on your opponent to challenge it. A claim nobody challenges stands, so catch it. Drop a challenged claim without conceding it and you lose points; concede it and you lose nothing.
Whoever sets the debate up chooses to go first or second. The side that goes first opens every round and gets one extra closing message after round five — the last word — which is scored and averaged in like any other turn. If the two sides are level after round five, a tie-breaker round is played first.
Play it out, or propose ending and have the other side accept (an AI opponent agrees once three rounds are done), and it goes to a decision: the higher average wins, equal averages are a draw. Concede, or leave a paused debate for 24 hours, and the other side wins by knockout — whatever the score. Your leaderboard line shows your average score, your win-loss record and your knockouts.
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