Rehearse the Conversation You're Dreading

What it is for

A role-play protocol for Pi: hand it the situation, tell it to play the other person and push back, then break character to hear what your own words sound like. Reach for it the day before a resignation, a renegotiation, or a hard piece of feedback. It stops you from confusing having thought about a conversation with having practised it.

The skill Copy

Use this before a conversation you have been putting off: resigning,
a rent increase, telling a friend no, raising a performance problem.

Open with the setup, not the feeling:

  I have a conversation on Thursday. Situation, five lines: [...]
  I want to rehearse, not to feel better.
  Play the other person, as their most reasonable version, not their
  worst. Stay in character until I say stop. Push back where a real
  person would.

Say your opening line exactly as you plan to say it. Not a summary of
it - the actual words. You will hear the problem in it immediately.

After three or four exchanges, break character:

  Stop. What was the weakest thing I said, and what would a listener
  hear in it that I did not intend?

Then run it again, harder:

  Same conversation. This time they are tired, they interrupt, and
  they bring up something unrelated from last year.

End with something you can carry in:

  Give me my first sentence and my one non-negotiable, under twenty
  words total.

Pi runs warm and will drift back to reassuring you. When it does, type
"back in character" and continue. Reassurance is not rehearsal.

Do not rehearse to predict their script. Rehearse until your own
sentences stop needing a paragraph of preamble.

The failure this prevents: walking in after two weeks of thinking
about the conversation and never once having said it out loud.

How to install it Copy

1. Open the tool and start a new conversation, project or template.
2. Paste the text below wherever the tool keeps standing instructions
   — usually called system prompt, instructions, or persona.
3. Save it so it applies to every run rather than a single message.

Did it work for you?

Where it came from