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Parliament of Owls
Query multiple LLMs and deep research APIs in parallel.
Post each response as a comment on a GitHub Issue.
Built on Simon Willison's llm for standard model access, with direct API integrations for deep research endpoints. Supports dozens of free models via OpenRouter.
Install
# From source
pip install -e .
# Or globally with pipx (recommended)
pipx install .
Quick Start
# 1. Configure your council (interactive picker)
owl council
# 2. Ask the council
owl ask "What are the tradeoffs between Redis and Memcached for session storage?"
# 3. Read from a file
owl ask -f research_question.md
# 4. Pipe from stdin
echo "Explain quantum computing" | owl ask
# 5. Post to a GitHub issue
owl ask "..." --gh owner/repo
owl ask "..." --gh owner/repo --issue 42
Setting Up Models
Standard Models (via llm)
Install llm plugins and set their API keys:
# OpenAI
llm install llm-openai # included by default with llm
llm keys set openai # paste your OpenAI API key
# Anthropic (Claude)
llm install llm-anthropic
llm keys set anthropic # paste your Anthropic API key
# Google Gemini
llm install llm-gemini
llm keys set gemini # paste your Google AI API key
# Mistral
llm install llm-mistral
llm keys set mistral # paste your Mistral API key
# Grok (xAI)
llm install llm-grok
llm keys set grok # paste your xAI API key
# DeepSeek
llm install llm-deepseek
llm keys set deepseek # paste your DeepSeek API key
# Cohere
llm install llm-command-r
llm keys set cohere # paste your Cohere API key
# OpenRouter (dozens of models, many free — no credit card needed)
llm install llm-openrouter
llm keys set openrouter # paste your OpenRouter API key
# Local models via Ollama
llm install llm-ollama
# No key needed — just have Ollama running
Verify your installed models:
llm models # list all available models
Keys are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/io.datasette.llm/keys.json (macOS) or ~/.config/io.datasette.llm/keys.json (Linux).
You can also pass keys via environment variables (e.g. OPENAI_API_KEY) or inline with --key.
See the full llm plugin directory for more providers.
Free Models via OpenRouter
Sign up at openrouter.ai (no credit card required) and get a free API key. Many powerful models are completely free:
- Claude 4.6 Opus / Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Anthropic)
- GPT-5 Nano / GPT-4o Mini (OpenAI)
- Gemini 3 Flash / Gemma 3 27B (Google)
- Grok 4.1 Fast (xAI)
- DeepSeek V3.2 (DeepSeek)
- GLM-4.5 Air (Z.ai)
- Llama 3.3 70B (Meta)
- Mistral Small 3.1 (Mistral)
- Many more — run
llm models | grep ":free"to see all
Rate limits: ~20 req/min, ~200 req/day per free model. Owl staggers requests to stay within limits.
Deep Research APIs
Deep research models use direct API calls (not llm plugins). Set their keys as environment variables:
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-... # o3-deep-research, o4-mini-deep-research
export PERPLEXITY_API_KEY=pplx-... # sonar-deep-research
export GOOGLE_API_KEY=AI... # Gemini Deep Research Agent
export DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=sk-... # deepseek-reasoner
export XAI_API_KEY=xai-... # Grok agentic search
Add these to your ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc to persist them.
GitHub Integration
For posting results to GitHub Issues, owl uses your gh CLI auth or a GITHUB_TOKEN:
# Option A: gh CLI (recommended)
gh auth login
# Option B: environment variable
export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_...
Commands
owl ask "prompt" # Query all council members
owl ask -f prompt.md # Read prompt from file
cat prompt.txt | owl ask # Read from stdin
owl ask "prompt" --gh owner/repo # Create new issue with responses
owl ask "prompt" --gh owner/repo --issue 42 # Post to existing issue
owl council # Interactive TUI to select council members
owl council-list # Show current council
owl models # Show all available models