turnwise

An MCP server that scores dialogue transcripts for bridging quality.

Pre/post surveys ask participants how they felt. turnwise reads what they said, and gives each speaker six scores.

### Concession: 4.00, confidence 0.75

Three markers across 175 words, granting a point to the other side twice and
stating a changed view once, for a weighted density of 2.40 per 100 words.

> [turn 11] **Sam:** "Although you got me on the transportation contract."
> [turn 11] **Sam:** "But I'm less comfortable than I was ten minutes ago."

extract_evidence returns the pattern matches with the rule that fired and the turns where nothing matched, leaving you to decide whether a match means what the rule assumes.

Install

npm install && npm run build

Add this to claude_desktop_config.json, then restart Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "turnwise": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/turnwise/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Tools

Tool	Purpose
score_conversation	Per-speaker scores with evidence. arc_segments: 3 shows change across a session.
extract_evidence	Matches for you to adjudicate, plus unmatched turns.
parse_transcript	Check speaker detection before scoring.
compare_conversations	Two sessions side by side.
analyze_cohort	Aggregate many conversations, with effect sizes.
explain_indicator	Full rubric, limits, and citations for one indicator.
transcribe_audio	Local speech-to-text for one recording.
transcribe_session	Multitrack folder to one speaker-labeled transcript.
check_audio_support	Which local backends are installed.

The parser detects WebVTT, SRT, Otter, Rev, plain Speaker: text, and JSON.

Indicators

Indicator	Direction	Grounded in
Receptiveness	higher is better	Yeomans, Minson, Collins, Chen & Gino (2020)
Perspective-taking	higher is better	Kalla & Broockman (2020, 2023)
Contempt	lower is better	Gottman & Levenson (1992, 2002)
Curiosity	higher is better	Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson & Gino (2017)
Concession	higher is better	Deutsch (1973); Fisher & Ury
Personal disclosure	higher is better	Broockman & Kalla (2016)

Follow-up questions and reciprocated disclosure are computed from turn structure, and explain_indicator covers the rest.

Audio

pip install mlx-whisper        # Apple Silicon, fastest
pip install -U openai-whisper  # cross-platform
brew install whisper-cpp       # no Python
brew install ffmpeg            # video and multitrack

transcribe_audio returns text without speaker labels, because this tool does no diarization.

Changing one recording setting fixes this: in Zoom, turn on Settings > Recording > Record a separate audio file for each participant, then point transcribe_session at the folder. Each file holds one person, so attribution is exact and the filenames become the speaker names.

Limits

Read docs/METHODOLOGY.md before putting these numbers in a report.

Validation against trained human coders is still outstanding, so treat these as evidence-linked observations. Contempt comes in low because tone carries most of it and a transcript has none, and sarcastic agreement will score as ordinary agreement. Participants choose which workshop to attend, so a difference between two groups may come from who signed up rather than from anything the program did.

Development

npm test          # 32 unit tests
npm run calibrate # 22 minimal pairs the instrument must order correctly
npm run smoke     # exercises every tool over MCP

Run calibrate after any lexicon edit, since it also tracks the adversarial cases that pattern matching cannot solve.

Editing src/lexicon.ts changes the instrument, so bump RUBRIC_VERSION when you do, or year-over-year comparisons stop meaning anything.

Apache-2.0.