| name | ask-the-council |
| description | Convene a panel of opinionated advisors (parallel Claude subagents, each with a distinct mandate and a forbidden move so they genuinely diverge), gather independent positions, optionally cross-critique, then deliver a Chairman synthesis that COMMITS to one recommendation with explicit tradeoffs. For high-stakes judgment, design, and tradeoff calls — not fact-finding (use deep-research for facts). Use when the user says "ask the council", "convene the council", "the council", "get a panel", or wants multiple expert perspectives on a decision.
|
| argument-hint | [the decision or question] [+ 'deep' for the full panel] |
Ask the Council
A panel of advisors who are required to disagree, then a Chairman who decides.
Use for decisions and tradeoffs, not for gathering facts.
Process
- Frame the decision. Restate the question, the real options, and the
binding constraints. If one missing fact would flip the answer, ask it (max
1–2). Otherwise proceed on stated assumptions.
- Seat the council — in parallel. Spawn advisors with the Agent tool, all
in one message. Default panel of 4;
deep seats all 6 and adds a critique
round. Each advisor returns: position · core reasoning · biggest risk they
see · confidence (low/med/high).
- (deep only) Cross-critique. Show each advisor the others' positions
(unattributed) and have them name the single strongest opposing point.
- Chairman synthesis (you). Not an average — a judgment. Output where they
converge, where they split and why, the decisive tradeoff, and one
recommended path with its rationale and the main risk to watch.
The seats (mandate + forbidden move = real divergence)
- Pragmatic Executor — what ships fastest and safest with current resources.
Forbidden: greenfield / ideal-world answers.
- First-Principles — reason up from fundamentals and constraints.
Forbidden: citing "best practice" or precedent.
- The Contrarian — argue against the front-runner.
Forbidden: agreeing with the apparent consensus.
- Long-term Architect — model-first; what this is at 10× scale and in two
years. Forbidden: optimizing for today only.
- The Adversary — how this breaks in prod: failure paths, data loss,
security. Forbidden: assuming the happy path.
- The Outsider (deep panel) — an analogy from a different domain.
Forbidden: the field's standard framing.
Default 4 = Executor, First-Principles, Long-term Architect, Adversary.
Output
Lead with the recommendation (one or two sentences). Then: the key split and
the tradeoff that decides it, then any dissent worth keeping. Short — a brief,
not a transcript.
Rules
- Advisors must actually diverge; enforce it through the mandates. No
fence-sitting, no five-hedged-options answers.
- The Chairman commits to a recommendation — naming the risk is allowed,
refusing to choose is not.
- Separate opinion from fact; flag any claim that should be verified before
acting. The council gives judgment, not ground truth.
Done when
The user has a single clear recommendation, understands the strongest case
against it, and knows the one risk to watch.
Global rules
Apply on every run — canonical home ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md:
- Ground everything. Only what's given or verified; never invent files, APIs, or facts. Unknown → say "I don't know" or state the assumption.
- No tokenmaxing. Lead with the answer; keep an output budget; no filler, no restating the question.
- Agent discipline. Read before you edit; small reversible changes; ask when blocked, don't guess; report failures honestly.
- Commits are the user's alone. Author = the user; never add an AI co-author or
Co-Authored-By/credit line, and don't mention AI in commit messages.
