Council

Contract

Field	Bound contract
Trigger	User asks for a council, second opinions, or parallel investigation.
Authority	Read-only. No file, VCS, credential, paid, published, deployed, or remote mutation. Subagents inherit the same read-only posture unless the user explicitly scopes a narrower mutation.
Side effect	Spawns parallel subagents in chat output. No repo mutation unless the user explicitly scopes it. Deliverable is the council's decision memo.
Done	Decision memo with recommendation, consensus, risks, and evidence.

Inputs

The question or decision to investigate (required). Number of council members or specific investigative stances to represent (optional; default three distinct stances). Scope constraints and admissible evidence sources (optional). The user-stated criteria bound the investigation; do not widen scope beyond them.

Procedure

1. Restate the question and confirm scope against the user-stated criteria. Bound the investigation before spawning; do not widen scope. Done when: the question is restated and scope is confirmed against user criteria.
2. Define council members as distinct investigative stances appropriate to the question (for example optimist, skeptic, risk-auditor, domain expert). Use the user-specified stances when supplied; otherwise default to three. Done when: each council member is assigned a distinct investigative stance.
3. Spawn one subagent per stance. Each subagent investigates the question independently from its assigned stance, gathers evidence, and returns a position with supporting evidence and identified risks. Done when: one subagent is spawned per stance and each returns a position with evidence and risks.
4. Collect all subagent positions without merging prematurely. Done when: every subagent position is collected unmerged.
5. Compare positions across stances: mark consensus points, disagreements, and unresolved risks. Done when: consensus points, disagreements, and unresolved risks are marked across all positions.
6. Synthesize a decision memo stating the recommendation, the consensus reached, dissenting views, residual risks, and the evidence supporting each. Done when: the memo states recommendation, consensus, dissent, residual risks, and per-point evidence.
7. Present the memo. Do not select or execute a decision unless the user explicitly authorizes further action. Done when: the memo is presented and no decision is executed without explicit user authorization.

Failure and recovery

• Subagent returns no usable position: mark that stance as inconclusive, proceed with remaining members, and note the gap in the memo.
• All subagents inconclusive or evidence insufficient: return a non-converged memo stating the blocker; do not fabricate consensus or pretend the done predicate holds.
• Scope drift detected: stop, restate the user-stated criteria, and re-bound before continuing; never widen scope to manufacture a result.
• Subagent attempts repo mutation without user-scoped authorization: treat as out-of-scope, exclude the action, and record the violation in the memo.
• Partial-result rule: a memo with some inconclusive stances is valid as long as every gap is explicitly recorded; never silently drop a stance.

Output

A decision memo containing recommendation, consensus, dissenting views, residual risks, and evidence. Terminal classification is converged (consensus reached) or non-converged (insufficient evidence or unresolved disagreement).