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

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]

Copilot CLI tip — diversify the council: When practical, assign different model families or providers to different voices via per-agent model overrides. The goal is not novelty for its own sake, but reducing the chance that all four voices inherit the same model bias. See multi-model-strategy for concrete pairing guidance.

Then read_agent each result.

4. Synthesize with bias guardrails

• Do not dismiss an external view without explaining why
• If an external voice changed your recommendation, say so explicitly
• Always include the strongest dissent even if you reject it
• If two voices align against your initial position, treat that as a real signal

5. Output format

## Council Verdict: [Decision Question]

### Positions
| Voice | Recommendation | Core Reasoning |
|-------|---------------|----------------|
| Architect | [position] | [1-line summary] |
| Skeptic | [position] | [1-line summary] |
| Pragmatist | [position] | [1-line summary] |
| Critic | [position] | [1-line summary] |

### Strongest Dissent
[The best argument against the recommended path]

### Verdict
**[Chosen path]**

Rationale: [2-3 sentences explaining the choice and why dissent was acknowledged but not followed]

Next action: [Concrete first step]

See Also

• multi-model-strategy — choosing which model to use
• plan-mode-mastery — structured planning before execution
• team-planner — multi-agent coordination for large tasks