# Grand Council Consensus > Grand council — unanimous cross-family consensus - Skill: `lukasz7251/grand-council-consensus` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 4 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add lukasz7251/grand-council-consensus` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/lukasz7251/grand-council-consensus/raw - Safety review: pending (external: skill-scanner PASS, skillspector PASS) - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: lukasz7251 (https://skillmd.com/u/lukasz7251) - Updated: 2026-09-22 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/lukasz7251/grand-council-consensus --- # Grand council — unanimous cross-family consensus ## Overview The heavyweight tier above a lighter peer-review. When a decision is genuinely hard — architecture, deps, major UX, a security/data-model call — or when a single peer reviewer deadlocks, convene **every available LLM family** (one per vendor) at **max reasoning**, and debate to **unanimous consensus**. The same council also serves as the **gate** that certifies a council-gated automated action (e.g. an auto-merge). **Core rule: one veto rejects.** Reaching unanimity is what *grants authority* to act on the decision — including **push + open PR** — while a hard ceiling (no infra mutation, cloud-provider writes read-only) holds **regardless of any vote**. The bar is **MVP/PoC-correct** (fixable after human tests), **not** perfection. **Integrity principle (the gate must verify itself).** A safety gate that doesn't check whether its own reviewers actually ran licenses the automated action on false confidence — worse than no gate. So the gate is **codified** in `run-council.sh` (liveness-smoke → verdict-contract → quorum → audit), never reconstructed from memory. **A reviewer that exits 0 but produces no valid verdict is INVALID — never silently counted as a vote.** This rule exists because it has failed live: a mis-invoked reviewer returned a *greeting* instead of a review (some CLIs — e.g. `agy` — read their prompt from **stdin**, not a positional arg; see `roster.md`). ## When to use / not use **Use** for: a hard/high-stakes call (architecture, dependency choice, major UX, security/data model); **or** when a lighter peer-review tier hits impasse/round-cap; **or** the **gate** of a council-gated automated action. **Not** for: routine spec/plan/diagnosis gates (use a single peer reviewer there — far cheaper) — the council is slow and expensive, reserved for the hard ~5% and the automated-action boundary. ## Authority model (the point) | Unanimous consensus **GRANTS** | Consensus **NEVER grants** (hard ceiling) | |---|---| | UI · UX · architecture · deps · tests decisions | any **infra mutation** | | proceed · **push** · **open PR** | **cloud-provider** (AWS / GCP / Firebase / etc.) in any non-read-only mode | | a **gate CERTIFY** (safety) for a human-pre-authorized automated action | an automated action with **no** standing human authorization | - **Decision standard:** deliver the task's **MVP/PoC**, correctable after human tests — **not** perfection. - **Push is conditional:** consensus authorizes push/open-PR **only when a standing human go-signal is already present**. Consensus decides the design is *ready to ship*; it does **not** override **absent** human arming, and **never** the ceiling above. - **Gate variant (higher bar, codified):** when convened to sign off an automated action that lands code (e.g. a feature-PR **auto-merge**, human pre-authorized and council-gated), the council applies a **hard-evidence certainty** standard — it must be **certain** the action won't break the mainline, backed by green CI + the local quality cascade + a contained, intended diff scope. It tolerates only **minor, justified** imperfections (e.g. a mock blocked by an external dependency), never breakage. The council still never *grants* the action — it **certifies safety**; the standing human authorization is the grant. **Run it via `run-council.sh --gate merge`** (below), not by hand. ## The veto standard (what makes unanimity achievable) > A **VETO is reserved** for "this proposal **fails to deliver a working MVP/PoC**, **or breaches a hard > rule** (security, the ceiling above, the task's acceptance criteria)." **Preferences / perfectible-later > improvements are voiced as non-blocking notes — they are NOT veto-grounds.** And a reviewer that did not > actually review (INVALID) is **not** a veto and **not** an approval — it is excluded and retried (quorum below). Without this, unbounded debate + any-veto = permanent deadlock. The standard is the circuit-breaker on *content*; the round cap (below) is the circuit-breaker on *time*. ## Roster and per-member calls **One strongest model per family, ≥3 distinct families** — codex (OpenAI) · grok (xAI) · claude (Anthropic) · agy (Google). **Whichever family is running the session is the in-session driver-member** (full vote + veto); the other three families are invoked as **external CLIs**. Don't double a vendor (e.g. don't spawn an external `claude` when the driver already *is* claude). `<3` families ⇒ **cannot convene** → fall back to a single peer reviewer or the human. Each member runs at **max reasoning**, under a hard `gtimeout 600` wrapper, with **`v->all; all->pass [label="yes"]; all->cap [label="no (a veto)"]; cap->ref [label="yes"]; ref->v; cap->newp [label="no (cap hit / irreconcilable) → REJECT proposal"]; newp->diff [label="yes"]; diff->p; newp->human [label="no"]; } ``` - **Bounded:** **N=6 rounds per proposal × K=3 distinct proposals** (≤18 total) — far beyond a typical peer-review's ~5, but **guaranteed to terminate**. Not "unlimited". - Votes are tallied **deterministically from the required `VOTE:` line**, never by semantic guessing. - Protocol + veto standard + auto-iterate detail: **`debate-protocol.md`**. ## Running the gate — `run-council.sh` (codified) For the gate variant (and any single-round certify/veto), don't reconstruct the invocations — run: ```bash ./run-council.sh \ --prompt /tmp/gate-prompt.txt # task framing + the FULL diff to review \ --out /tmp/council-out # audit dir (logs + council-summary.md land here) \ --gate merge # or: standard \ --reviewers codex,grok,agy # the families that are NOT the current driver # exit 0 = CERTIFY/PASS · 2 = REJECT(veto) · 3 = INCONCLUSIVE(quorum) · 4 = setup error ``` It bakes in the integrity machinery so the verdict can be trusted: - **Liveness smoke** per reviewer (`LIVE_OK_`) **before** the real review — fail-fast on a broken CLI. - **Verdict contract** — each reviewer must end with `FINAL_VERDICT=CERTIFY` or `FINAL_VERDICT=VETO: reason`; the parser takes the **last** match (dodges mid-stream template echo). No valid line ⇒ INVALID, retried once, then excluded. - **Quorum** — `merge`: **≥2 VALID + the primary VALID + zero vetoes → CERTIFY**; any veto → REJECT; otherwise INCONCLUSIVE. `standard`: ≥1 VALID + zero vetoes. - **De-anchoring + attack-surface diversity** — reviewers are told the author's "all green" is a *claim*, and each gets a different FOCUS so the council probes the surface, not the same spot three times. - **Audit** — `council-summary.md` (per-reviewer verdict + findings + decision); attach it to the PR. - bash 3.2-safe (no `declare -A`; state keyed off per-reviewer files — survives the `&`-subshell boundary). **Acting on the exit code:** 0 → proceed + attach the summary. 2 (REJECT) → read the veto reason, fix systematically, re-run the **full local cascade**, re-convene (the gate's iteration is in the *code*, not the debate). 3 (INCONCLUSIVE) → **escalate to the human** (the council couldn't certify; the automated action is not authorized). ## Mandatory written protocol (council minutes) **A required deliverable — the council may NOT grant authority until it is written.** For a **decision**, the driver writes a minutes file (e.g. `council-notes/-council-.md`) **and** embeds it in the authorizing PR body: per round, per member — the proposal; each member's **statement/argument**; their **`VOTE`**; for a veto, the **objection + what-would-change-my-vote**; how it was **resolved**; model + reasoning-effort (with sources); and the **final unanimous rationale**. For a **gate**, `run-council.sh`'s `council-summary.md` **is** that audit — attach it to the PR. Any human can audit *who blocked what, why, and how it resolved*. Shape: **`debate-protocol.md`**. ## Red flags — STOP - Declaring consensus with **<3 families**, or letting one vendor hold **two** vetoes. - **Counting a reviewer's greeting / empty / no-`FINAL_VERDICT` output as a vote** (CERTIFY *or* VETO), or **reconstructing the invocations from memory** instead of running `run-council.sh`. - Treating a **preference** as a veto (perfectionism deadlock) — veto is MVP-blocker / hard-rule only. - Using consensus to authorize an **infra mutation**, **cloud-provider writes**, or an automated action with **no** standing human authorization (consensus certifies; the standing auth grants). - Pushing/opening a PR with **no standing arming go-signal** (consensus ≠ arming). - Proceeding to the automated action on **INCONCLUSIVE** (exit 3) without a human. - Running a member **without max reasoning**, or **without `