/ask-the-council

name: ask-the-council
description: >-
  Seats a panel of Claude advisors with opposed mandates, then a Chairman
  commits to one recommendation and names the strongest dissent.
when_to_use: >-
  Use unasked for a high-stakes decision where credible options compete and
  being wrong is expensive to reverse: schema, auth model, vendor lock-in,
  an irreversible migration. Also on "ask the council", "the council", "get
  a panel". Not for fact-finding (it opines, it doesn't verify), a call with
  one obvious answer, or anything reversible in an afternoon: decide
  directly.
argument-hint: "[the decision or question] [+ 'deep' for the full panel]"
effort: high

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.

Proactive use

If a decision is high-stakes and the options genuinely compete — architecture choice, buy-vs-build, irreversible migration — invoke this without being asked: announce in one line ("Convening the council: <decision>") and proceed. Never ask permission to run the skill.

Gate it first: if you can't name what the wrong choice costs to reverse, don't seat the council — decide directly and move on. A panel costs 4–6 opus subagents; spend that only where being wrong is expensive to undo.

Frame and seat the council

Restate the decision, the real options, and the binding constraints. If one missing fact would flip the answer, ask it (max 1–2 questions) — otherwise proceed on stated assumptions. Then spawn the advisors with the Agent tool, all in one message, so they run in parallel. Each returns: **position · the argument for the position · biggest risk they see · confidence (low/med/high)**. On `deep`, once all seats report, show each advisor the others' positions (unattributed) and have them name the single strongest opposing point.

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. `deep` seats all 6 and adds the cross-critique round. The forbidden move is what forces real divergence instead of four agents politely agreeing — keep it non-negotiable; seat count never changes.

Model routing

Spawn every advisor seat — and the deep-mode critique round — with the Agent tool's `model` parameter set to `opus`: this is the one skill in the plugin whose entire value is the quality of independent judgment per seat, and it shouldn't silently inherit whatever subagent default a given session has. The Chairman synthesis is never a subagent — it runs in the main thread, on the session's own model, because committing to a recommendation needs the full conversation context the advisors don't have. Naming `model: opus` in the spawn itself is what makes this portable: it doesn't depend on any installer's default subagent model.

The Chairman synthesis is not an average of the seats' positions — it's a judgment call. Weigh the seats, don't tally them; a 3–1 split doesn't win by count if the lone dissent names the risk that actually decides it.

Output

Lead with the **recommendation** (one or two sentences). Then: the key split and the tradeoff that decides it, then any dissent worth keeping, then what to verify before acting. Close with **Next step**: the hand-off below that fits the verdict, by skill name, with the reason — or why none applies yet. A verdict without a next step leaves the user holding an opinion and no move. Short — a brief, not a transcript.

Boundaries

• The Chairman **commits** to a recommendation — naming the risk is allowed,

refusing to choose is not.

• Advisors must actually diverge; enforce it through the mandates. No

fence-sitting, no five-hedged-options answers.

• Separate opinion from fact; flag any claim that should be verified before

acting. The council gives judgment, not ground truth.

• Not for fact-finding — run a research pass instead; the council opines, it

doesn't verify. Not for low-stakes or one-obvious-answer calls — deciding directly is cheaper and faster than a panel.

• Verify or say you don't know; never invent a path, API, number, or fact.

Commits are the repo owner's alone: no AI co-author trailer, no AI mention in messages.

Hand-offs

• Verdict chosen → `ponytail` the winning option down to its minimal build.
• Verdict changes an architectural fact → `architect` updates

`SOURCE_OF_TRUTH.md` before any code.

• Verdict keeps the current design → no `architect` update, since no fact

changed; say so, and name the tripwire that would reopen it. If the verdict still calls for work (hardening, an audit), `ponytail` sizes it.

Done when

The user has a single clear recommendation, understands the strongest case against it, and knows the one risk to watch.