council

Council

Convene four advisors for decisions under ambiguity:

• Architect — correctness, maintainability, long-term implications
• Skeptic — premise challenge, simplification, assumption breaking
• Pragmatist — shipping speed, user impact, operational reality
• Critic — edge cases, downside risk, failure modes

This is for decision-making under ambiguity, not code review, architecture design, or implementation planning.

When to Use

• A decision has multiple credible paths and no obvious winner
• You need explicit tradeoff surfacing before committing
• Conversational anchoring is a risk (you've been going in one direction too long)
• A go/no-go call would benefit from adversarial challenge

Examples: monorepo vs polyrepo · ship now vs hold for polish · feature flag vs full rollout · simplify scope vs keep strategic breadth

When NOT to Use

Instead of council	Use
Verifying whether output is correct	evaluate-repository or direct review
Breaking a feature into implementation steps	planner / Plan Mode
Reviewing code for bugs	code-review skill
Straight factual questions	answer directly
Obvious execution tasks	do the task

Workflow

1. Extract the real question

Reduce to one explicit prompt:

• What exactly are we deciding?
• What constraints matter?
• What counts as success?

If the question is vague, ask one clarifying question before convening.

2. Form the Architect position first

Before reading other voices, write down:

• Your initial position
• The three strongest reasons for it
• The main risk in your preferred path

This anchors the synthesis so it doesn't simply mirror external voices.

3. Launch three subagents in parallel

Each subagent gets: the decision question + compact context + strict role. No full conversation history.

# Copilot CLI tool call — launch 3 background task agents

task:
  agent_type: "general-purpose"
  name: "skeptic"
  mode: "background"
  prompt: |
    You are the Skeptic on a four-voice decision council.

    Question: [DECISION QUESTION]
    Context: [COMPACT CONTEXT]

    Challenge the framing. Question assumptions. Propose the simplest credible alternative.

    Respond with:
    1. Position — 1-2 sentences
    2. Reasoning — 3 concise bullets
    3. Risk — biggest risk in the status quo
    4. Surprise — one thing the other voices may miss
    Under 300 words. No hedging.

task:
  agent_type: "general-purpose"
  name: "pragmatist"
  mode: "background"
  prompt: |
    You are the Pragmatist on a four-voice decision council.
    [same structure — optimize for speed, simplicity, real-world execution]

task:
  agent_type: "general-purpose"
  name: "critic"
  mode: "background"
  prompt: |
    You are the Critic on a four-voice decision council.
    [same structure — surface downside risk, edge cases, failure modes]