By name: council description: "Multi-persona debate for founder decisions. 4 personas argue a topic across structured rounds."
Council
Multi-agent debate for founder decisions. 4 personas argue a topic across structured rounds, respond to each other's actual points, then synthesize. Produces a visible transcript and a recommended path.
When to Use
Invoke when:
- Conflicting signals from conversations and you need to decide which to follow
- About to change positioning in canonical files (
/q-calibrate) - Design partner asks for something that might pull you off-wedge
- Investor feedback contradicts buyer feedback
- Competitive move detected and you need a response strategy
- Any decision where "it depends" means you need structured tension
- User says "council", "debate this", "weigh options", "get perspectives"
Workflow Routing
| Trigger | Workflow | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Full structured debate (3 rounds) | workflows/debate.md |
30-90 sec |
| Quick sanity check (1 round) | workflows/quick.md |
10-20 sec |
Default to Quick. Use Debate only for positioning changes, pre-investor prep, or decisions that affect canonical files.
The Personas
4 personas, each anchored to real project files. They read the files before speaking -- grounded opinions, not generic advice.
| Persona | Perspective | Reads | Core Question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operator | What we can actually do today | q-system/my-project/current-state.md |
"Can we ship this with what we have?" |
| Buyer | What a CISO/security leader would pay for | q-system/canonical/discovery.md, q-system/my-project/relationships.md |
"Would a buyer pay for this? Does it match what they asked for?" |
| Investor | The fundable narrative | q-system/canonical/talk-tracks.md |
"Does this sharpen or dilute the story?" |
| Contrarian | What's wrong, what we're not seeing | q-system/canonical/objections.md, q-system/my-project/competitive-landscape.md |
"What breaks? What are we ignoring?" |
Persona Rules
- Every persona speaks from their anchored files, not from general knowledge
- If a canonical file is empty/template, the persona says "I don't have data to ground this" -- no guessing
- Personas reference specific entries from their files when making points
- Contrarian must raise at least one uncomfortable point per round
Output
Every council session produces:
- Visible transcript -- the full debate, readable
- Recommended path -- synthesized from convergence
- Decision log entry -- appended to
q-system/canonical/decisions.mdwith[COUNCIL-DEBATED]origin tag
Decision Log Format
### [Decision summary]
- **Date:** YYYY-MM-DD
- **Origin:** [COUNCIL-DEBATED]
- **Mode:** Quick / Debate
- **Trigger:** [What prompted this]
- **Convergence:** [Where personas agreed]
- **Dissent:** [Where they disagreed]
- **Decision:** [What the founder chose]
- **Founder action:** [APPROVED / MODIFIED / REJECTED] the recommendation
The founder always makes the final call. Council recommends, founder decides.
Integration with Q System
| Q Command | Council Role |
|---|---|
/q-calibrate |
Quick check before any canonical file change |
/q-debrief with conflicting signals |
Quick check: "signal or noise?" |
/q-plan with competing priorities |
Debate: which path to take |
| Pre-investor meeting | Debate: stress-test the narrative |
| Design partner feature request | Quick check: "build / park / counter-offer" |
Token Budget
- Quick: ~20K tokens (4 agents x 1 round). Fine for daily use.
- Debate: ~60K tokens (4 agents x 3 rounds). Use for real decisions only.
Before running a Debate, ask: "Is this decision worth 60K tokens?" If the answer is "probably not," use Quick.