Council

Consult your advisory council: three AI personas backed by different frontier models, each with full repo context.

Personas

Name	Archetype	Core question	Default provider
Cato	Skeptical Strategist	"What could go wrong?"	gemini
Ada	Expansive Optimist	"What could this become?"	claude
Marcus	Pragmatic Builder	"What do we do next?"	codex

For full persona details, see references/personas.md.

How to invoke

Run scripts/counsel.py via Bash from the current working directory:

# Consult one persona
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/counsel.py cato "Should we use Redis or Postgres for session storage?"

# Consult all three (runs in parallel)
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/counsel.py all "Review the changes in the last commit — are we missing anything?"

# Override a persona's provider
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/counsel.py ada "Is this API design too minimal?" --ada-provider codex

Replace <skill-dir> with the absolute path to this skill directory.

When to consult whom

• Cato alone: Security review, risk assessment, premortem, "is this safe to deploy?"
• Ada alone: Product direction, UX decisions, "is this feature compelling enough?"
• Marcus alone: Implementation tiebreakers, scope cuts, "what's the simplest path?"
• All three: Major architecture decisions, launch readiness, "should we do X or Y?"

Choosing the right moment

Proactively suggest consulting the council when:

• The user is about to make an irreversible architectural decision
• There are multiple valid approaches with non-obvious trade-offs
• A deployment feels risky or under-tested
• The user explicitly asks "what do you think?" about a high-stakes choice

Always ask the user before invoking — say something like: "This feels like a good moment to consult the council. Want me to ask Cato/Ada/Marcus/all for their take?"

Handling responses

1. Run the script and capture output
2. Show the full, unedited response from each persona to the user — do not summarize or paraphrase their words
3. After showing all responses, briefly note key agreements or tensions across personas
4. Ask the user how they want to proceed — the council advises, the user decides

Provider configuration

Each persona defaults to a different LLM provider for genuine model diversity. Override with flags if a provider is unavailable:

• --cato-provider claude|codex|gemini
• --ada-provider claude|codex|gemini
• --marcus-provider claude|codex|gemini

The script has a 5-minute timeout per persona. All agents run in read-only mode in the current directory.