Council Mode

⚠️ LEGACY — 2026-07-26 · NOT RECOMMENDED FOR NEW WORK

This skill is retired upstream and is shipped for reference and reversibility, not for use.

Do not invoke it against a live API key. Its cloud path issues a real, billable client.beta.messages.create request using the advisor_20260301 tool with betas=["advisor-tool-2026-03-01"], and hardcodes "model": "claude-opus-4-7". That beta has not been exercised since April 2026, so whether it still exists server-side is unknown, and the model pins throughout this skill (claude-opus-4-7, claude-sonnet-4-6, claude-haiku-4-5) are superseded. An invocation may bill your account for a request that cannot succeed.

Why it is here at all. The tier heuristic below is the durable part and is model-agnostic:

1. Can a smart intern do this in one step? → C
2. Does it need synthesis, structure, or multiple steps? → B
3. Does it involve strategy, irreversibility, or cross-cutting impact? → A
4. Would getting it wrong cost $10K+ or set a wrong direction for months? → A+

Plus two disciplines worth keeping regardless of which models you run: plan before act — the stronger model advises on the plan, the executor carries it out — and treat an advisor budget as a hard ceiling, not a suggestion.

What replaced it upstream. Modern agent harnesses route internally, so an explicit classify-then-dispatch layer has no caller left. The advisor role became a dedicated reviewer subagent; gate-and-escalate became a standing review norm. If you want the capability, wire the heuristic into whatever harness you already run rather than reviving this dispatcher.

Retired 2026-07-26. Scripts are preserved unmodified so nothing you may have built on them breaks.

Council Mode

Adversarial Parallel Comparison | Failure-Mode Surfacing | Not Consensus

Council mode dispatches the same task to multiple model tiers and/or providers in parallel, then produces a diff report surfacing where each output disagrees. The goal is not to pick a winner — the goal is to learn where each model breaks down, so future routing avoids known failure modes.

Core principle:

The orchestration layer's job is to surface where each model FAILS so you can route around it — NOT to pick the "best" model. Build as adversarial comparison infrastructure, not consensus/coordination.

This is the opposite of traditional LLM council patterns (majority vote, consensus synthesis). Those patterns wash out signal. Council mode preserves disagreement because disagreement IS the signal.

BRAIN CHECK — Run Before Every Council Call

Brain root: resolved from $CEREBRO_ROOT env var or ~/.cerebro/profile.yaml.

1. Verify advisor-mode is installed and provider-aware (--local, --compare available)
2. Local fleet (optional): if fleet_primary is set, verify Ollama is reachable at that host on port 11434. Cloud-only deployments (no local fleet) skip this check — all tiers route to cloud providers.
3. Check {brain_root}/skills/advisor-mode/logs/daily_usage.md if present — is remaining advisor budget enough for the council roster?
4. Load task context from the relevant department Brain if the task references one

WHEN TO USE COUNCIL MODE

Do NOT use council mode for: routine summaries, quick lookups, bulk drafting tasks, anything where parallel cost isn't justified by the decision weight.

COUNCIL ROSTER (default)

The roster is configured in ~/.cerebro/profile.yaml under council.roster. Default tiers (cloud-only deployment):

With local fleet configured: add senior-advisor (local Ollama model) to the roster via council.local_tier: true in profile.

INVOCATION

# Default roster (cloud tiers)
python3 {brain_root}/skills/council-mode/Scripts/council_run.py "<task>"

# Include local fleet tier (requires fleet_primary set)
python3 {brain_root}/skills/council-mode/Scripts/council_run.py --local "<task>"

# Custom roster
python3 {brain_root}/skills/council-mode/Scripts/council_run.py \
  --tiers frontier,mid "<task>"

OUTPUT FORMAT

Council mode emits a structured diff report:

=== COUNCIL REPORT ===
Task: <task text>
Roster: frontier | mid | fast

[FRONTIER — Claude Opus]
<output>

[MID — Claude Sonnet]
<output>

[FAST — Claude Haiku]
<output>

=== DISAGREEMENTS ===
[Tier A vs Tier B] <specific point of disagreement>
...

=== FAILURE SIGNALS ===
[TIER] <failure mode detected: hallucination / refusal / contradiction>

=== ROUTING RECOMMENDATION ===
<which tier to trust for this task class, based on this council run>

PROFILE CONFIGURATION

Council mode reads ~/.cerebro/profile.yaml for:

council:
  roster:           [frontier, mid, fast]   # active tiers
  local_tier: false                         # true = include Ollama senior-advisor
  local_host: ""                            # fleet_primary value, if local_tier: true
  budget_cap: 10                            # max USD per council run (advisory)

If no profile exists, council defaults to cloud-only 3-tier roster.

SCOPE CONTRACT

References (auto-wikilinks)

• [[daily_usage]]