Council Of Minds

/council-of-minds

Six intellectual personas deliberate your hardest decisions across multiple AI providers. One command. Structured disagreement. No fake consensus.

Modes

/council-of-minds "question"           → full (6 personas, 2 rounds)
/council-of-minds --quick "question"   → quick (3 personas, 1 round)
/council-of-minds --duo "question"     → duo (2 opposing voices, 1 round)

When to Use

• Decision has ≥2 credible paths and no obvious winner
• You want structured disagreement, not a polished "yes"
• You suspect your own anchoring bias
• High stakes: architecture, strategy, go/no-go, hiring, product direction

When NOT to Use

• Single correct answer (use tools or research instead)
• Pure implementation task (use /plan)
• Code review (use /code-review)
• Factual lookup (just ask directly)

The Six Personas

Each persona is routed to a different provider to ensure genuinely different reasoning.

If a provider is unavailable, fall back to Claude for that persona but explicitly note the fallback in output.

Protocol

Step 0 — Problem Restate Gate

Before any analysis, every persona must reframe the question in one sentence.

Rule: if ≥3 personas restate the question differently from how it was asked, the original question was the problem. Resolve the question ambiguity before proceeding.

Step 1 — Extract the real decision

Reduce to:

• What exactly are we deciding?
• What constraints are non-negotiable?
• What does success look like in 6 months?
• What is the cost of reversing this decision?

Step 2 — Form Architect position first (anti-anchoring)

Before reading other voices, write:

1. Initial position (1 sentence)
2. Three strongest reasons
3. Main risk in preferred path

This prevents synthesis from simply mirroring external voices.

Step 3 — Launch personas in parallel

Each persona gets only:

• The restated decision question
• Minimal necessary context (no full conversation history)
• Their role prompt

Persona prompt template:

You are [PERSONA NAME] on a six-voice decision council.

Your intellectual tradition: [tradition]
Your primary lens: [lens]

Question: [restated decision]

Context (only what's needed):
[compact context — code snippet, constraint, metric — max 200 words]

Respond with exactly this structure:
1. Restate — rephrase the question in your own words (1 sentence)
2. Position — your recommendation (1-2 sentences)
3. Reasoning — 3 bullets, each ≤ 25 words
4. Strongest objection to your own position — 1 sentence
5. What the other voices will miss — 1 sentence

Under 250 words total. No hedging. No "it depends" without specifying what it depends on.

Step 4 — Dissent Quota Check

After collecting all positions:

Rule: If ≥4 of 6 personas agree on the same recommendation, force 2 personas (chosen by least-confident alignment) to steelman the opposing view before synthesis.

This prevents groupthink from producing false consensus.

Step 5 — Round 2 (full mode only)

Show each persona the other five positions (anonymized — no names, just positions). Each updates or defends their view in ≤ 100 words.

Step 6 — Synthesize

Rules for synthesis:

• Do not dismiss any external view without explaining why
• If an external voice changed the Architect's recommendation, say so explicitly
• Lead with Unresolved Questions before the verdict
• The strongest dissent must appear even if rejected

Output Format

## Council of Minds: [decision title]

### Problem Restate Gate
- Original question: [as asked]
- Restated by council: [if different, flag it]

---

### Positions

**The Architect** (Claude) — [1-sentence position]
> [key reasoning, 1 line]

**Socrates** (Gemini) — [1-sentence position]
> [key reasoning, 1 line]

**Feynman** (DeepSeek) — [1-sentence position]
> [key reasoning, 1 line]

**The Pragmatist** (Groq) — [1-sentence position]
> [key reasoning, 1 line]

**Kahneman** (OpenAI) — [1-sentence position]
> [key reasoning, 1 line]

**Torvalds** (Ollama) — [1-sentence position]
> [key reasoning, 1 line]

---

### Synthesis

**Where they align:** [what ≥4 agree on]

**Strongest dissent:** [the most important disagreement — do not soften it]

**Dissent quota triggered:** yes / no — [if yes, who steelmanned what]

**Unresolved questions:**
- [question the council couldn't answer]
- [what you'd need to know to decide with confidence]

**Recommended next steps:** [concrete, not "do more research"]

### Verdict
**Recommendation:** [the synthesized path — commit to one]
**Confidence:** [low / medium / high + why]
**Reversibility:** [how hard to undo if wrong]

Quick Mode (3 personas)

Use: Architect + Socrates + Torvalds

Best for: tactical decisions, scope calls, technology choices

One round only. No Round 2. No dissent quota.

Output: same format but 3 positions only.

Duo Mode (2 personas)

Pick the two most opposing intellectual traditions for the question type:

One round. No restate gate (too short). Verdict required.

Anti-Patterns

❌ Feeding the full conversation history to all personas (kills independence)
❌ Hiding disagreement in the verdict to sound decisive
❌ Using council for tasks with an objectively correct answer
❌ Accepting ≥4-way agreement without triggering dissent quota
❌ "It depends" without specifying the dependency
❌ Council when the real blocker is missing information, not conflicting values

Related Skills

• council — 4-voice version, lighter
• multi-agent-debate — Du et al. 2023 algorithm, multi-round consensus
• santa-method — adversarial verification of a specific claim
• first-principles-thinker — single voice, Feynman-style deconstruction