18 AI personas deliberate hard decisions. Structured disagreement, one command.
Claude Code · Codex · Gemini CLI
Table of Contents
/plugin marketplace add 0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence
/plugin install council@council-of-high-intelligence
Or via installer:
git clone https://github.com/0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence.git
cd council-of-high-intelligence
./install.shThen in Claude Code:
/council Should we open-source our agent framework?
/council --quick Should we add caching here?
/council --duo Should we use microservices or monolith?
git clone https://github.com/0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence.git
cd council-of-high-intelligence
./install.sh --codexgit clone https://github.com/0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence.git
cd council-of-high-intelligence
./install.sh --geminiThe same /council commands work in all three hosts.
A single LLM gives you one reasoning path dressed up as confidence. Ask it a hard question and you get a fluent, structured, wrong answer. The council gives you structured disagreement instead.
- Genuinely different perspectives. Polarity pairs force real tension: Socrates destroys assumptions, Feynman rebuilds from first principles. Multi-provider routing spreads members across Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, and Ollama, so the reasoning actually differs rather than putting one model in eighteen costumes.
- Wrong questions caught early. The Problem Restate Gate makes every member reframe the question before analysis begins. When three members restate your question three different ways, the question was the problem.
- An honest map of the gaps. Verdicts lead with Unresolved Questions and Recommended Next Steps rather than confident-sounding consensus. What the council cannot settle matters more than where it happens to agree.
- Groupthink actively suppressed. Dissent quotas, novelty gates, and counterfactual prompts enforce disagreement. If agreement passes 70% too early, two members are conscripted to steelman the opposing view.
Why not just ask Claude directly? One prompt buys one model's confident best guess. The council runs 3 to 18 independent analyses from different intellectual traditions, forces them to attack each other's claims, and synthesizes a verdict that surfaces the disagreement instead of smoothing it away. It is the difference between asking an advisor and convening a board.
- Questions with a right answer. Ask the model, or read the docs. Eighteen personas cannot make a factual lookup more true, and they will cost you eighteen times as much.
- Decisions you have already made. The council will always find a member who agrees with you. That is not validation, it is theatre.
- Anything urgent. Full mode runs three rounds across up to 18 members. Reach for
--quickor--duo, or reach for something else entirely. - Small, reversible calls. If you can undo it in an afternoon, ship it and find out. Torvalds is on the council for a reason.
| Agent | Figure | Domain | Default Model | Polarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
council-aristotle |
Aristotle | Categorization & structure | opus | Classifies everything |
council-socrates |
Socrates | Assumption destruction | opus | Questions everything |
council-sun-tzu |
Sun Tzu | Adversarial strategy | sonnet | Reads terrain & competition |
council-ada |
Ada Lovelace | Formal systems & abstraction | sonnet | What can/can't be mechanized |
council-aurelius |
Marcus Aurelius | Resilience & moral clarity | opus | Control vs acceptance |
council-machiavelli |
Machiavelli | Power dynamics & realpolitik | sonnet | How actors actually behave |
council-lao-tzu |
Lao Tzu | Non-action & emergence | opus | When less is more |
council-feynman |
Feynman | First-principles debugging | sonnet | Refuses unexplained complexity |
council-torvalds |
Linus Torvalds | Pragmatic engineering | sonnet | Ship it or shut up |
council-musashi |
Miyamoto Musashi | Strategic timing | sonnet | The decisive strike |
council-watts |
Alan Watts | Perspective & reframing | opus | Dissolves false problems |
council-karpathy |
Andrej Karpathy | Neural network intuition | sonnet | How models actually learn and fail |
council-sutskever |
Ilya Sutskever | Scaling frontier & AI safety | opus | When capability becomes risk |
council-kahneman |
Daniel Kahneman | Cognitive bias & decision science | opus | Your own thinking is the first error |
council-meadows |
Donella Meadows | Systems thinking & feedback loops | sonnet | Redesign the system, not the symptom |
council-munger |
Charlie Munger | Multi-model reasoning & economics | sonnet | Invert: what guarantees failure? |
council-taleb |
Nassim Taleb | Antifragility & tail risk | opus | Design for the tail, not the average |
council-rams |
Dieter Rams | User-centered design | sonnet | Less, but better; the user decides |
Polarity Pairs: members are chosen as deliberate counterweights
- Socrates vs Feynman: Destroys top-down vs rebuilds bottom-up
- Aristotle vs Lao Tzu: Classifies everything vs structure IS the problem
- Sun Tzu vs Aurelius: Wins external games vs governs the internal one
- Ada vs Machiavelli: Formal purity vs messy human incentives
- Torvalds vs Watts: Ships concrete solutions vs questions whether the problem exists
- Musashi vs Torvalds: Waits for the perfect moment vs ships it now
- Karpathy vs Sutskever: Build it, observe it, iterate vs pause, research, ensure safety first
- Karpathy vs Ada: Empirical ML intuition vs formal systems theory
- Kahneman vs Feynman: Your cognition is the first error vs trust first-principles reasoning
- Meadows vs Torvalds: Redesign the feedback loop vs fix the symptom and ship
- Munger vs Aristotle: Multi-model lattice vs single taxonomic system
- Taleb vs Karpathy: Hidden catastrophic tails vs smooth empirical scaling curves
- Rams vs Ada: What the user needs vs what computation can do
3-round structured deliberation: independent analysis → cross-examination → final positions.
/council Should we open-source our agent framework?
/council --triad strategy What's our competitive moat?
/council --full What is the right pricing model?
2-round rapid analysis for simpler decisions. No cross-examination.
/council --quick Should we add caching here?
/council --quick --triad shipping Should we release today?
2-member dialectic using polarity pairs. Great for exploring tensions.
/council --duo Should we use microservices or monolith?
/council --duo --members torvalds,ada Is this abstraction worth it?
Pre-defined Triads: 20 domain-specific 3-member combinations
| Domain | Triad | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
architecture |
Aristotle + Ada + Feynman | Classify + formalize + simplicity-test |
strategy |
Sun Tzu + Machiavelli + Aurelius | Terrain + incentives + moral grounding |
ethics |
Aurelius + Socrates + Lao Tzu | Duty + questioning + natural order |
debugging |
Feynman + Socrates + Ada | Bottom-up + assumption testing + formal verification |
innovation |
Ada + Lao Tzu + Aristotle | Abstraction + emergence + classification |
conflict |
Socrates + Machiavelli + Aurelius | Expose + predict + ground |
complexity |
Lao Tzu + Aristotle + Ada | Emergence + categories + formalism |
risk |
Sun Tzu + Aurelius + Feynman | Threats + resilience + empirical verification |
shipping |
Torvalds + Musashi + Feynman | Pragmatism + timing + first-principles |
product |
Torvalds + Machiavelli + Watts | Ship it + incentives + reframing |
founder |
Musashi + Sun Tzu + Torvalds | Timing + terrain + engineering reality |
ai |
Karpathy + Sutskever + Ada | Empirical ML + scaling frontier + formal limits |
ai-product |
Karpathy + Torvalds + Machiavelli | ML capability + shipping pragmatism + incentives |
ai-safety |
Sutskever + Aurelius + Socrates | Safety frontier + moral clarity + assumption destruction |
decision |
Kahneman + Munger + Aurelius | Bias detection + inversion + moral clarity |
systems |
Meadows + Lao Tzu + Aristotle | Feedback loops + emergence + categories |
uncertainty |
Taleb + Sun Tzu + Sutskever | Tail risk + terrain + scaling frontier |
design |
Rams + Torvalds + Watts | User clarity + maintainability + reframing |
economics |
Munger + Machiavelli + Sun Tzu | Models + incentives + competition |
bias |
Kahneman + Socrates + Watts | Cognitive bias + assumption destruction + frame audit |
Council Profiles: pre-built panels for different needs
All 18 members with domain triads above. Best for broad deliberation.
12-member panel for discovery and "unknown unknowns" reduction:
- Socrates, Feynman, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Ada, Lao Tzu, Aurelius, Torvalds, Karpathy, Sutskever, Kahneman, Meadows
- Profile triads:
unknowns,market-entry,system-design,reframing,ai-frontier,blind-spots
5-member panel for fast decision-to-action:
- Torvalds, Feynman, Sun Tzu, Aurelius, Ada
- Profile triads:
ship-now,launch-strategy,stability
The council automatically detects installed LLM providers and distributes members across them for genuine model diversity, with zero config required.
/council --triad decision Should we accept this acquisition offer?
Supported providers (auto-detected):
| Provider | CLI | Exec Method |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic (Claude) | native | subagent (always available) |
| OpenAI | codex |
codex exec |
gemini |
gemini -p |
|
| Ollama (local) | ollama |
ollama run |
| NVIDIA NIM | NVIDIA_API_KEY env |
openai_compatible_api |
| Cursor | cursor-agent |
cursor-agent -p |
NVIDIA NIM (build.nvidia.com) exposes 130+ open-weight models (DeepSeek, Kimi, MiniMax, GLM, Qwen, Nemotron) via an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Free tier: 1,000 credits, 40 RPM. Detection requires only export NVIDIA_API_KEY=nvapi-..., with no CLI binary needed. A sample seat allocation lives in configs/provider-model-slots.nim.example.yaml.
Cursor CLI (cursor.com/cli) is a model aggregator: one binary (cursor-agent) serves GPT-5.x, Claude, Gemini, and Grok families through a single CURSOR_API_KEY (or cursor-agent login). Members route via headless read-only mode (cursor-agent -p --mode ask --model <id>). Install with curl https://cursor.com/install -fsS | bash. Because Cursor can serve claude-* models, pick cross-family Cursor models (e.g. gpt-5.4-high, gemini-3-pro, grok-4) when a seat needs to add diversity rather than duplicate Anthropic bias. List live IDs with cursor-agent --list-models. A sample seat allocation lives in configs/provider-model-slots.cursor.example.yaml.
How routing works:
- Polarity pairs are separated across providers (hard constraint)
- Members spread evenly across available providers
- Per-member
provider_affinityin frontmatter used as tiebreaker - If any provider fails, automatic fallback to Claude
Flags:
--no-auto-route: disable auto-routing, use Claude-only defaults--dry-route: print the routing table without running the council--models [path]: manual override with YAML config (seeconfigs/provider-model-slots.example.yaml)
Full mode runs 7 steps: provider routing → problem restate gate → independent analysis → cross-examination → enforcement scan → final positions → verdict synthesis. Verdicts lead with what the council doesn't know.
Full protocol details
- Provider Detection & Routing: auto-detect providers, assign members
- Problem Restate Gate: each member restates the problem + provides an alternative framing before analysis begins
- Round 1: Independent Analysis (blind-first): all members analyze in parallel (400 words max)
- Round 2: Cross-Examination: members challenge each other (300 words, must engage 2+ others)
- Post-Round Enforcement: dissent quota, novelty gate, agreement check, anti-recursion (single pass)
- Round 3: Final Crystallization: 100-word position statements
- Verdict Synthesis: leads with Unresolved Questions and Recommended Next Steps
- Problem Restate + Rapid Analysis: reframe + analyze in parallel (200 words max)
- Final Positions: 75-word crystallization
- Problem Restate + Opening Positions: reframe + state positions (300 words)
- Direct Response: engage opponent's claims (200 words)
- Final Statements: 50-word positions
- Bounded protocol is the forcing function. Deliberation runs a fixed round budget (full 3 / quick 2 / duo 3), so it cannot loop. Anti-recursion guards (the "hemlock rule" caps Socrates' questioning; any pair exceeding 2 messages is cut off) enforce the bound mid-round.
- Dissent quota + novelty gate + counterfactual pass prevent premature convergence
- Tie-breaking is a counted tally, not a prose impression. Each member emits a structured
STANCE:line in the final round; consensus requires a domain-weighted 2/3 majority (the on-domain seat carries 1.5×, designated before positions exist). A genuine split is escalated to the user with the full tally rather than forced into false consensus. - Full and Quick verdicts include a Vote Tally (duo issues no tally, since it is dialectic rather than decision-issuing); all verdicts include a Follow-Up section for outcome tracking
/plugin marketplace add 0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence
/plugin install council@council-of-high-intelligence
Update later with /plugin update council. Plugin installs get automatic updates and namespaced agents (council:council-socrates, …). If you previously used install.sh, the plugin takes precedence, so no cleanup is needed.
Installs 18 council agents plus skill files for Claude, Codex, and/or Gemini CLI.
./install.sh # Claude install (default)
./install.sh --codex # Claude + Codex skill install
./install.sh --codex-only # Codex-only install
./install.sh --gemini # Claude + Gemini CLI extension install
./install.sh --gemini-only # Gemini-only install
./install.sh --claude-dir /path/to/.claude # Non-default Claude config directory
./install.sh --codex-dir /path/to/.codex # Non-default Codex config directory
./install.sh --gemini-dir /path/to/.gemini # Non-default Gemini config directory
./install.sh --dry-run # Preview without writing
./install.sh --copy-configs # Also install model routing templatesRestart your target client(s) after installing. Run ./scripts/council-simulation-checklist.sh to validate. Try the demo session pack to test all modes.
- Claude Code CLI (required for Claude usage)
- Codex (required for Codex skill usage)
- Agent/subagent support in your client (enabled by default)
Optional providers (auto-detected for multi-provider routing):
- Codex CLI (OpenAI):
npm i -g @openai/codex - Gemini CLI (Google): see gemini-cli repo
- Ollama (local models): install from ollama.com
- Cursor CLI (GPT/Claude/Gemini/Grok aggregator):
curl https://cursor.com/install -fsS | bash
Contributions welcome. Read the contribution guidelines first.
If you find this project useful, consider supporting my open-source work.
Solana donations
2k1oq9U99mwy4gm8P2hXPJoZusoXQCpFs35EEf5Ve73y
MIT. See LICENSE.
