council

name

council

description

Live collaborative brainstorm. Spawns named teammates (agent teams) that BUILD ON EACH OTHER'S ideas directly via SendMessage — generative cross-pollination ('yes, and…'), not one agent listing ideas alone and not an adversarial debate. Heuristic: use teammates when the agents need to talk to each other (build on ideas, hand-offs, debate); use parallel subagents when they don't (independent fan-out). Keywords: council, collaborative brainstorm, brainstorm together, ideate together, build on ideas, expand ideas, expand on this, riff together, group ideation, how might we, what could we build, team brainstorm. Use when: user types /council, says 'brainstorm together', 'expand on this idea', 'ideate as a team', or wants an open question explored by diverse perspectives that compound each other's ideas live. Requires the MAIN session (a subagent cannot spawn teammates) and CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1. Do NOT use for: a quick idea list (use solo agents), deciding between options (use /debate), mechanical tasks.

Council

Guaranteed entry point for a live collaborative brainstorm: named teammates build on each other's ideas via SendMessage, you facilitate, then you harvest the expanded set. Generative — the "yes, and…" counterpart to /debate's "no, but…".

This skill is a thin trigger. The full protocol, spawn-prompt template, anti-groupthink rules, and variants live in the heavy-think skill — read it before spawning: ../heavy-think/references/team-brainstorm.md

When NOT to use this

Heuristic: use teammates when the agents need to talk to each other; use parallel subagents when they don't.

• Just want a quick idea list? → solo parallel agents are cheaper (heavy-think Brainstorm, Stage 3).
• Deciding between options / pressure-testing a call? → that's /debate, not a council.

Prerequisites (check first)

Requirement	Why	If missing
You are the main session	Agent teams have no nested teams — a subagent can't spawn teammates	Stop; tell the user to run it from the main session
CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1	Enables teammates + SendMessage	Fall back to isolated parallel Brainstorm (weaker — no live cross-pollination)

If either fails, say so explicitly — do NOT silently fall back and pass it off as a live council.

Playbook

1. Frame an open question. "How might we…" / "what could we…" — not a yes/no (that's debate). State constraints + what a great idea looks like.
2. Assign distinct generative lenses. 2–4 teammates (First Principles, User, Futurist, Operator, Minimalist, Contrarian…). Name them. Designate one wildcard to keep the space open.
3. Spawn all in ONE message — model="opus", each given full context (teammates don't inherit your history), its lens, and collaborators by name. Tell each to contribute via SendMessage, make no file edits, spawn nothing.
4. Phase 1 — Diverge. Each posts raw ideas independently first (no early anchoring; quantity over polish).
5. Phase 2 — Cross-pollinate. They read each other and BUILD: "yes-and", combine, push further. Every message must ADD, never just approve.
6. Phase 3 — Cluster & elevate. Group ideas, surface the most novel, develop the top few together.
7. Synthesize + shut down. YOU harvest the expanded set: standout concepts, surprising combinations no single lens produced, ranked by novelty/value, plus what to explore next. Then shut the teammates down.

Rules

• Facilitate, don't generate — you spark with gap prompts, you never add your own ideas.
• Diverge before converge; reject "good idea!" with no extension.
• Keep a wildcard injecting "what if the opposite / what's missing."
• The deliverable is YOUR synthesis of the emergent ideas, not a transcript dump.

Related

• team-brainstorm protocol — full protocol, spawn-prompt template, variants
• debate — adversarial counterpart (decide / pressure-test)
• heavy-think — Council is the team escalation of Brainstorm mode