/council — Multi-Model Consensus Council

Spawn parallel judges with different perspectives, consolidate into consensus. Works for any task — validation, research, brainstorming.

Quick Start

/council --quick validate recent                               # fast inline check
/council validate this plan                                    # validation (2 agents)
/council brainstorm caching approaches                         # brainstorm
/council research kubernetes upgrade strategies                # research
/council --preset=security-audit validate the auth system      # preset personas
/council --deep --explorers=3 research upgrade automation      # deep + explorers
/council --debate validate the auth system                     # adversarial 2-round review
/council                                                       # infers from context

Council works independently — no RPI workflow, no ratchet chain, no ao CLI required.

Modes

Spawn Backend (MANDATORY)

Council requires a runtime that can spawn parallel subagents and (for --debate) send messages between agents. Use whatever multi-agent primitives your runtime provides. If no multi-agent capability is detected, fall back to --quick (inline single-agent).

Required capabilities:

• Spawn subagent — create a parallel agent with a prompt (required for all modes except --quick)
• Agent messaging — send a message to a specific agent (required for --debate)

Skills describe WHAT to do, not WHICH tool to call. See skills/shared/SKILL.md for the capability contract.

After detecting your backend, read the matching reference for concrete spawn/wait/message/cleanup examples:

• Shared Claude feature contract → skills/shared/references/claude-code-latest-features.md
• Local mirrored contract for runtime-local reads → references/claude-code-latest-features.md
• Claude Native Teams → references/backend-claude-teams.md
• Codex Sub-Agents / CLI → references/backend-codex-subagents.md
• Background Tasks → references/backend-background-tasks.md
• Inline (--quick) → references/backend-inline.md

See also references/cli-spawning.md for council-specific spawning flow (phases, timeouts, output collection).

When to Use --debate

Use --debate for high-stakes or ambiguous reviews where judges are likely to disagree:

• Security audits, architecture decisions, migration plans
• Reviews where multiple valid perspectives exist
• Cases where a missed finding has real consequences

Skip --debate for routine validation where consensus is expected. Debate adds R2 latency (judges stay alive and process a second round via backend messaging).

Incompatibilities:

• --quick and --debate cannot be combined. --quick runs inline with no spawning; --debate requires multi-agent rounds. If both are passed, exit with error: "Error: --quick and --debate are incompatible."
• --debate is only supported with validate mode. Brainstorm and research do not produce PASS/WARN/FAIL verdicts. If combined, exit with error: "Error: --debate is only supported with validate mode."

Task Types

Council infers task type from natural language. Trigger words: validate (validate, check, review, assess, critique, feedback, improve), brainstorm (brainstorm, explore, options, approaches), research (research, investigate, deep dive, analyze, examine, evaluate, compare).

See references/task-type-rigor-gate.md for the trigger-word table, the MANDATORY first-pass rigor gate for plan/spec validation, and the full --quick single-agent inline mode contract.

Architecture

See references/architecture-flow.md for the context-budget rule, full Phase 1→3 execution flow diagram, reviewer-config loading, graceful degradation table, effort levels, and pre-flight checks.

Packet Format (JSON)

See references/packet-format.md for the full JSON packet schema (fields, output_schema, judge-prompt boundary rules) and the Empirical Evidence Rule for feasibility reviews.

Perspectives

Perspectives & Presets: Use Read tool on skills/council/references/personas.md for persona definitions, preset configurations, and custom perspective details.

Auto-Escalation: When --preset or --perspectives specifies more perspectives than the current judge count, automatically escalate judge count to match. The --count flag overrides auto-escalation.

Named Perspectives & Consensus

See references/consensus-and-output.md for named-perspective usage (--perspectives, --perspectives-file, YAML format, flag priority), consensus verdict rules (PASS/WARN/FAIL combination table, DISAGREE resolution), and the finding-extraction flywheel protocol. See references/personas.md for built-in presets.

Explorer Sub-Agents

Explorer Details: Use Read tool on skills/council/references/explorers.md for explorer architecture, prompts, sub-question generation, and timeout configuration.

Summary: Judges can spawn explorer sub-agents (--explorers=N, max 5) for parallel deep-dive research. Total agents = judges * (1 + explorers), capped at MAX_AGENTS=12.

Debate Phase (--debate)

Debate Protocol: Use Read tool on skills/council/references/debate-protocol.md for full debate execution flow, R1-to-R2 verdict injection, timeout handling, and cost analysis.

Summary: Two-round adversarial review. R1 produces independent verdicts. R2 sends other judges' verdicts via backend messaging (send_input or SendMessage) for steel-manning and revision. Only supported with validate mode.

Agent Prompts

Agent Prompts: Use Read tool on skills/council/references/agent-prompts.md for judge prompts (default and perspective-based), consolidation prompt, and debate R2 message template.

Output Format & Consensus Rules

Consensus verdict combination rules, DISAGREE handling, and the finding-extraction flywheel protocol live in references/consensus-and-output.md. Full report templates (validate, brainstorm, research) and debate-report additions live in references/output-format.md. All reports write to .agents/council/YYYY-MM-DD-<type>-<target>.md. Findings extraction targets .agents/council/extraction-candidates.jsonl; see references/finding-extraction.md for schema and classification heuristics.

Core consensus rules: All PASS -> PASS; Any FAIL -> FAIL; Mixed PASS/WARN -> WARN; cross-vendor disagreement -> DISAGREE.

Configuration

Minimum quorum: 1 agent. Recommended: 80% of judges. On timeout, proceed with remaining judges and note in report. On user cancellation, shutdown all judges and generate partial report with INCOMPLETE marker.

See references/flags-reference.md for the full flag and environment variable reference (COUNCIL_TIMEOUT, COUNCIL_CODEX_MODEL, --deep, --mixed, --debate, --evidence, --commit-ready, --preset, --profile, and all other flags).

CLI Spawning Commands

CLI Spawning: Use Read tool on skills/council/references/cli-spawning.md for team setup, Claude/Codex agent spawning, parallel execution, debate R2 commands, cleanup, and model selection.

Examples

See references/examples-extended.md for the full example catalog and walkthroughs (fast single-agent validation, adversarial debate, cross-vendor consensus with explorers).

Troubleshooting

See references/troubleshooting.md for common error messages, causes, and solutions, plus the judge→council migration table.

Multi-Agent Architecture

See references/multi-agent-architecture.md for the deliberation protocol, communication rules, Ralph Wiggum compliance, degradation behavior, and judge naming convention.

See Also

• skills/vibe/SKILL.md — Complexity + council for code validation (uses --preset=code-review when spec found)
• skills/pre-mortem/SKILL.md — Plan validation (uses --preset=plan-review, always 3 judges)
• skills/post-mortem/SKILL.md — Work wrap-up (uses --preset=retrospective, always 3 judges + retro)
• skills/swarm/SKILL.md — Multi-agent orchestration
• skills/standards/SKILL.md — Language-specific coding standards
• skills/research/SKILL.md — Codebase exploration (complementary to council research mode)

Reference Documents

• references/architecture-flow.md
• references/packet-format.md
• references/flags-reference.md
• references/examples-extended.md
• references/troubleshooting.md
• references/multi-agent-architecture.md
• references/task-type-rigor-gate.md
• references/consensus-and-output.md
• references/model-routing.md
• references/backend-background-tasks.md
• references/backend-claude-teams.md
• references/backend-codex-subagents.md
• references/backend-inline.md
• references/brainstorm-techniques.md
• references/claude-code-latest-features.md
• references/model-profiles.md
• references/presets.md
• references/quick-mode.md
• references/ralph-loop-contract.md
• references/agent-prompts.md
• references/cli-spawning.md
• references/debate-protocol.md
• references/explorers.md
• references/finding-extraction.md
• references/output-format.md
• references/personas.md
• references/caching-guidance.md
• references/reviewer-config-example.md
• references/strategic-doc-validation.md
• references/evidence-mode.md
• ../shared/references/backend-background-tasks.md
• ../shared/references/backend-claude-teams.md
• ../shared/references/backend-codex-subagents.md
• ../shared/references/backend-inline.md
• ../shared/references/claude-code-latest-features.md
• ../shared/references/ralph-loop-contract.md