council
council
Claude Code runs it as
/council and Codex as $council. Other agents take its name or a plain request such as "put this to a council".What it does
council takes one decision and has it assessed by separate lenses, each in its own subagent, then integrates their answers into a single recommendation. It only assesses: it edits no file, changes no configuration and carries out no plan unless you explicitly ask for that.
| Lens | What it looks at |
| Architecture | Contracts, coupling, failure modes, operability, long-term cost |
| Delivery | Sequencing, testability, migration, rollback, the evidence needed to ship |
| Product | User value, usability, scope discipline, compatibility |
| Security | Trust boundaries, permissions, data exposure, abuse cases |
| Dissent | The strongest evidence-backed case against the emerging consensus |
Every lens gets the same brief: the decision, its constraints, the evidence and the known unknowns, and nothing else. No lens sees the session or another lens's answer, so none of them can echo the room. Each returns a verdict (
support, support-with-conditions, oppose or insufficient-evidence), a confidence, its key evidence, risks, required conditions and unknowns.One synthesizer then writes the decision:
proceed, proceed-with-conditions, revise, stop or gather-evidence, with the consensus, the dissent, the conditions, the evidence gaps, one bounded next action and how conflicts were resolved. Dissent stays in the dissenting lens's own words, attributed to it, even when the other lenses disagree. A lens that returned nothing is listed as not convened and never counted. Lenses that run on the same model through the same runtime are separate roles, and the report says so.When to use it
- A decision that is expensive to reverse: an architecture choice, a migration, a security boundary, a change of scope.
- A choice where you want the case against it argued before you commit.
council sits outside the delivery loop. Bring it a decision at any point, then take the outcome to brainstorm or wish. Inside a brainstorm, the lead can convene its own council for one contested decision.
Run it
| Agent | How it runs |
| Claude Code | /council <decision> runs the saved workflow council: every lens in the table at once, then the synthesis. See Workflows |
| Codex | $council <decision> sends the lenses to subagents by hand, with the same brief and the same response shapes |
| Other agents | Its name, or a plain request such as "put this to a council" |
By hand, the skill picks the lenses the decision needs, always with dissent and at least one other lens. Add constraints, evidence or unknowns to the request and every lens receives them.
A recorded run
Simulated terminal: a replay of a real /council run in Claude Code, built from its saved capture and shortened in time. Edited in two places: host details hidden (paths shown as ~/, account plan and quota), and the agent launch line removed.
The run asks whether a small test repository should move its tests from
bun:test to node:test. The session probes the repository first and hands that evidence to the lenses. Architecture, product, security and dissent oppose, delivery supports with conditions, and the synthesis is gather-evidence: nobody has named a machine without Bun yet, so nothing justifies the move.Read the transcript: the redacted text of the run's final screen and scrollback.