Counsel

Counsel (portable protocol)

Two flagship reviewers from different vendors attack a written proposal in parallel; you chair: synthesize their findings, revise, re-convene until verdicts converge — max 3 rounds. The chair rules on every finding and owns the final call; the seats advise.

Runtime launch mechanics live in adapters — not here:

• Claude Code: consumer-local .claude/skills/counsel/SKILL.md
• Codex / GPT chair notes: references/codex-chair.md
• GitHub Copilot CLI: references/github-copilot-chair.md

Naming (do not overclaim)

Contract

• Two seats, two vendors, every round. An engine down ⇒ degrade loudly: a one-seat run is a second opinion, not a counsel — name that in the record. Each seat's vendor must be established by evidence the chair can verify (runtime metadata, launch surface), not by the seat self-reporting its own model — where one tool launches both seats and only a model string differs, self-report can silently echo a substituted default and fake the second vendor.
• The proposal is a file, and it names the source paths reviewers verify claims against — reviewers judge evidence, not prose.
• Every proposal declares its altitude — ordered idea → plan → spec → implementation — and lists what is deliberately deferred below it. Seats judge at that altitude: a listed deferral is judged for safety to defer, never as an absence, and a below-altitude finding is appendix material, not a verdict driver.
• Every finding gets a disposition: accepted → visible revision in the next draft; rejected → one-line justification in the record. A finding about a fact (proposal contradicts a file) is settled by the chair re-reading the file, never by preference.
• Seats read; only the chair writes the proposal.
• Secrets never enter prompts or reports — existence checks only.

Bench (logical seats)

Edit this table when flagships change. Adapters map these seats onto concrete launch tools.

The loop

1. Setup — create a session scratchpad dir; state comes from disk, not memory:

   DIR="<session-scratchpad>/counsel/<decision-slug>" && mkdir -p "$DIR"
   ROUND=$(( $(ls "$DIR"/proposal-v*.md 2>/dev/null | wc -l | tr -d ' ') + 1 ))
   echo "DIR: $DIR"; echo "ROUND: $ROUND"
   

2. Draft proposal-v$ROUND.md: first Altitude: <idea|plan|spec|implementation> — deferred: <list>, then the decision, verified current state, design, alternatives, risks, sizing, and source paths. Round ≥2: append prior findings + disposition table and "what changed in this draft".
3. Convene both seats in parallel, same reviewer prompt (below), each blind to the other. Round 1 spawns fresh; rounds ≥2 resume each seat's own session when the runtime supports it (else relaunch fresh — appendix protocol makes both modes equivalent).
4. STOP — wait for both reports before writing a word of synthesis. Ruling on the early return anchors the round on one vendor and reduces the counsel to an echo.
5. Synthesize: read both ## Plan verdict sections first; they frame the round. A valid report has that as its first substantive section (runtime attestation metadata may precede it), answers all five questions, has ≤7 decision-ranked findings, gives below-altitude notes no severity, and traces its final verdict to one plan-verdict answer. Return a malformed report to its seat once; a second malformed result is an invalid seat, so apply the naming table before synthesis. Then merge findings, mark agreements/conflicts, and write dispositions only for findings at or above altitude. Verdict gate:
   • Both SHIP AS-IS, or every accepted change already incorporated → CONVERGED, go to 6.
   • Any accepted BLOCKER or a valid RETHINK → material revision: back to 2. A RETHINK driven only by below-altitude notes is malformed.
   • ROUND = 3 → EXHAUSTED: chair rules; standing objections recorded as DISSENT.
   • Findings all rejected with justification → do not re-convene; rule now.
6. Deliver the counsel record (format below) ending with "Your actions". Decision that sticks → vault ADR/entity note per vault rules, linking the record.

Reviewer prompt (both seats — fill {})

You are one seat of a two-vendor counsel reviewing a proposal whose header declares its altitude and deliberate deferrals. Be adversarial and concrete — verify every claim you can against the sources; do not praise. Read {proposal path}. Verify against: {source paths}. Never read or quote credential values — existence checks only. {Round ≥2: Prior findings and dispositions are in the appendix; re-litigate a rejection only with new evidence. Answer the plan verdict fresh — dispositions feed findings, never replace whole-proposal judgment.} Report, in this order:

1. ## Plan verdict — prose answering: Is this the right problem? Is the approach sound and proportionate? What is the single most important thing? What simpler version would you build and what would it lose (none is valid with reasons)? Which listed deferrals are unsafe? This must be the first substantive section.
2. ## Findings — max 7, ranked by decision impact, each severity (BLOCKER/MAJOR/MINOR) — claim it concerns — concrete fix; only findings at or above the declared altitude belong here.
3. ## Below altitude (optional) — unranked, severity-free notes for later stages; they never justify the verdict. End with one verdict line — SHIP AS-IS / SHIP WITH CHANGES: (list) / RETHINK: (why) — naming which plan-verdict answer drives it. Write the report to {DIR}/review-<seat>-r{ROUND}.md when the runtime can write files; otherwise return the report as the final message for the chair to save.

Counsel record (deliverable to Jorge)

## Counsel: <decision> — <CONVERGED | DISSENT | EXHAUSTED> after N round(s)
| Round | openai verdict | anthropic verdict | Material changes |
Findings that changed the design: <bullets, seat-attributed>
Rejected findings + justification: <bullets>
Dissent (if any): <seat, objection, why the chair overruled>
Final proposal: <path>

If degraded: title the record ## Second opinion: … (or ## OpenAI counsel-style review: …) and say which seat was unavailable.

Anti-patterns

• Anchoring — synthesizing from the first report while the second runs.
• Rubber-stamp round — re-convening with no material revision.
• Chair abdication — pasting a seat's review as the decision.
• Echo bench — both seats from one vendor because the other engine was down, still calling it counsel.
• Altitude creep — auditing schema, parser, payload, or lock minutiae below the declared altitude. Those notes belong below altitude; dispositions for them drag the next round down a level.
• Shrinking agenda — replacing fresh whole-proposal judgment with prior detail dispositions. Every round re-answers the plan verdict against the current draft.