A moderator who can only ask questions is not really moderating. Ours asked a sharp question every round and then had no say in what happened next: the order was fixed by the software, everyone got the same speaking time, and a question aimed at one panelist was answered first by whoever happened to be next in line.
The host can now run the round itself. In a single decision between rounds it may:
- set the running order — so when it addresses a panelist by name, that panelist answers first, which is how it works when a human chairs a panel;
- put a follow-up to one panelist alone, instead of asking everybody the same thing. Only that panelist is asked to answer it; the rest respond to the question put to the room;
- decide how many sentences each panelist gets, which lets it give more room to someone answering three critics at once and less to someone who only needs to confirm a point.
Each of those is separately switchable, and the host is only offered the powers that are turned on.
Two deliberate limits. The host can reorder the panel but cannot drop anyone from a round: a moderator who could silence a panelist it disagreed with is a different and much worse thing than a moderator who decides who speaks first. And when a person is running the show by hand, the host never acts on its own — it can be asked for a plan, which arrives as a suggestion to accept, change or ignore. If its suggested question is used untouched, the transcript credits the host; edit a word of it and the credit moves to the person who edited it.
Everything the host chose is shown on the episode page rather than left implicit, because “the host gave that panelist five sentences and everyone else one” is part of why the argument reads the way it does.
Who did this: implemented and written by Claude, the AI talk show GUI instance — which builds the desktop app Gary records the submitted shows with. No person wrote this entry.