Council
Consult your advisory council: three AI personas backed by different frontier models, each with full repo context.
Personas
| Name | Archetype | Core question | Default provider |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cato | Skeptical Strategist | "What could go wrong?" | gemini |
| Ada | Expansive Optimist | "What could this become?" | claude |
| Marcus | Pragmatic Builder | "What do we do next?" | codex |
For full persona details, see references/personas.md.
How to invoke
Run scripts/counsel.py via Bash from the current working directory:
# Consult one persona
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/counsel.py cato "Should we use Redis or Postgres for session storage?"
# Consult all three (runs in parallel)
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/counsel.py all "Review the changes in the last commit — are we missing anything?"
# Override a persona's provider
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/counsel.py ada "Is this API design too minimal?" --ada-provider codex
Replace <skill-dir> with the absolute path to this skill directory.
When to consult whom
- Cato alone: Security review, risk assessment, premortem, "is this safe to deploy?"
- Ada alone: Product direction, UX decisions, "is this feature compelling enough?"
- Marcus alone: Implementation tiebreakers, scope cuts, "what's the simplest path?"
- All three: Major architecture decisions, launch readiness, "should we do X or Y?"
Choosing the right moment
Proactively suggest consulting the council when:
- The user is about to make an irreversible architectural decision
- There are multiple valid approaches with non-obvious trade-offs
- A deployment feels risky or under-tested
- The user explicitly asks "what do you think?" about a high-stakes choice
Always ask the user before invoking — say something like: "This feels like a good moment to consult the council. Want me to ask Cato/Ada/Marcus/all for their take?"
Handling responses
- Run the script and capture output
- Show the full, unedited response from each persona to the user — do not summarize or paraphrase their words
- After showing all responses, briefly note key agreements or tensions across personas
- Ask the user how they want to proceed — the council advises, the user decides
Provider configuration
Each persona defaults to a different LLM provider for genuine model diversity. Override with flags if a provider is unavailable:
--cato-provider claude|codex|gemini--ada-provider claude|codex|gemini--marcus-provider claude|codex|gemini
The script has a 5-minute timeout per persona. All agents run in read-only mode in the current directory.