council — Multi-expert Debate

council — Multi-expert Debate

SCOPE: Launch council, monitor progress, report status. Do nothing else.

Step 0: Verify CLI

which council

If missing: go install github.com/fitz123/council/cmd/council@latest. Do not proceed until which council succeeds.

Step 1: Question

• $ARGUMENTS if non-empty, else AskUserQuestion / free-text input.
• Write the question to a tempfile via the Write tool (never echo / printf / heredoc — question text may contain backticks, $(…), quotes, or newlines that the shell would interpret):

qfile=$(mktemp /tmp/council-question.XXXXXXXX)
echo "$qfile"

Then call Write with file_path=$qfile, content=<raw question text>.

Step 2: Launch (background)

-v is required for monitoring. env -u CLAUDECODE -u CLAUDE_CODE_ENTRYPOINT is required so the spawned claude -p does not trip the nested-CLI guard. Question goes via stdin redirection — never argv:

errlog=$(mktemp /tmp/council-stderr.XXXXXXXX)
echo "$errlog"
env -u CLAUDECODE -u CLAUDE_CODE_ENTRYPOINT council -v - \
  < "$qfile" > /dev/null 2> "$errlog"

Run with run_in_background: true. Save the task_id and $errlog — both are needed for status checks. Stdout is discarded because council writes the winner's body to ./.council/sessions/<id>/output.md on success.

A research-heavy run takes 3–5 min wall-clock.

Step 3: Confirm Launch

After 10–15s, read first 5 lines of $errlog to extract the session ID (line 1: ... — session <id>) and profile summary (line 2). Report:

council started. Task ID: <task_id>
Question: <first 100 chars>
Session: <session-id>
Session folder: ./.council/sessions/<session-id>/
Verbose log: <errlog>

Manual: tail -f <errlog>

STOP. Do not poll automatically.

Step 4: Status (on explicit user request)

Trigger words: "check council", "council status", "how is council doing".

1. TaskOutput (block: false) for the saved task_id.
2. Read tail of $errlog.

Running → report current phase from the most recent stage line:

• round 1 expert <X> ... → R1.
• round 2 expert <X> ... → R2.
• ballot <X> voted for <Y> ... → voting.

Exited:

Exit	Action
0	Read ./.council/sessions/<id>/output.md and print it. Tail of $errlog carries the verdict header.
1	Config / preflight error — show relevant stderr lines.
2	No consensus — point at output-<label>.md in the session folder.
6	Rate-limit quorum failure — surface the per-CLI footer from $errlog.
130	Interrupted — suggest /council-resume.

Then STOP.

Nested Claude Code Sessions

council does not strip CLAUDECODE from spawned claude -p subprocesses (unlike ralphex). The env -u prefix is the workaround. From a standalone terminal it is a no-op (vars aren't set).