council

name	council
description	Multi-seat deliberation for Hermes. Use when the user wants a council meeting, multi-perspective review, or autonomous council work session. Prefer the council tool over role-playing seats yourself.

Council

You have the council tool (and /council slash command). The engine owns the protocol — you call actions; you do not voice every seat yourself.

When to use

• Design / ship decisions that need dissent preserved
• Multi-role review (security, QA, PM, staff eng, …)
• Autonomous bounded implementation with a chair and worktree isolation

Flow

Setup

1. council action=list_templates if unsure
2. council action=convene template=software-team (or other)
3. council action=info to confirm roster

Interactive meeting

1. meeting_start with task
2. meeting_round (optionally with user_steer) until the human is ready
3. meeting_conclude → writes .council/records/ and may update memory

Autonomous work

1. work_start with task (requires git repo)
2. work_tick until status is concluded/stopped
3. Never merge — show merge_commands to the user and wait for approval
4. Or work_stop to halt early

Rules

• Do not flatten dissent into false consensus.
• Project state lives under .council/ in the project root.
• Seat personalities are editable markdown in .council/seats/.
• For work, all edits belong in the session worktree; the human owns the merge.
• If a session dies mid-flight, status lists interrupted scratchpads — offer resume (continue with same scratch via a new round) or archive, never silent delete.

Templates bundled

software-team (default), product-engineering-team, c-suite, solo-founder, writing-lab, hedge-fund-team, research-lab (maths / computing / architecture / controls).