Council of High Intelligence

<p align="center"> <img src="assets/header.jpeg" alt="Council of High Intelligence" width="800"> </p> <p align="center"> 18 AI personas deliberate your hardest decisions across multiple LLM providers. One command. </p> <p align="center"> <a href="https://github.com/0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence/releases"><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/v/release/0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence" alt="Release"></a> <a href="https://github.com/0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence/stargazers"><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/stars/0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence" alt="Stars"></a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/license-CC0-blue" alt="License"></a> <img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Claude_Code-skill-blueviolet" alt="Claude Code Skill"> <img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Codex-skill-black" alt="Codex Skill"> <img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/members-18-orange" alt="18 Members"> </p> <details> <summary><strong>Table of Contents</strong></summary>

• Quickstart
• Why This Works
• The 18 Council Members
• Three Deliberation Modes
• Multi-Provider Auto-Routing
• Deliberation Protocol
• Installation
• Requirements
• Contributing
• Support the Project

</details>

Quickstart

Claude Code

bashCopy
git clone https://github.com/0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence.git
cd council-of-high-intelligence
./install.sh

Then 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?

Codex

bashCopy
git clone https://github.com/0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence.git
cd council-of-high-intelligence
./install.sh --codex

Then in Codex:

/council Should we open-source our agent framework?
/council --quick Should we add caching here?
/council --duo Should we use microservices or monolith?

Why This Works

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:

• Get 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 you get actually different reasoning, not costume changes on one model
• Catch wrong questions early — the Problem Restate Gate makes every member reframe the question before analysis begins. If 3 members restate your question differently, the question was the problem
• Know what the council can't answer — verdicts lead with Unresolved Questions and Recommended Next Steps, not with confident-sounding consensus. What the council doesn't know matters more than where it agrees
• Prevent groupthink — dissent quotas, novelty gates, and counterfactual prompts enforce genuine disagreement. If >70% agree too early, two members are forced to steelman the opposing view

Why not just ask Claude directly? A single prompt gives you one model's confident best guess. The council gives you 3-18 independent analyses from different intellectual traditions, forces them to challenge each other's claims, and synthesizes a verdict that surfaces disagreement rather than hiding it. It's the difference between asking one advisor and convening a board.

The 18 Council Members

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

<details> <summary><strong>Polarity Pairs</strong> — members are chosen as deliberate counterweights</summary>

• 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

</details>

Three Deliberation Modes

Full Mode (default)

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?

Quick Mode (--quick)

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?

Duo Mode (--duo)

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?

<details> <summary><strong>Pre-defined Triads</strong> — 20 domain-specific 3-member combinations</summary>

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

</details> <details> <summary><strong>Council Profiles</strong> — pre-built panels for different needs</summary>

classic (default)

All 18 members with domain triads above. Best for broad deliberation.

exploration-orthogonal

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

execution-lean

5-member panel for fast decision-to-action:

• Torvalds, Feynman, Sun Tzu, Aurelius, Ada
• Profile triads: ship-now, launch-strategy, stability

</details>

Multi-Provider Auto-Routing

The council automatically detects installed LLM providers and distributes members across them for genuine model diversity — 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
Google	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-... — no CLI binary needed. See configs/provider-model-slots.nim.example.yaml for a sample seat allocation.

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-2.5-pro, grok-4) when a seat needs to add diversity rather than duplicate Anthropic bias. List live IDs with cursor-agent --list-models. See configs/provider-model-slots.cursor.example.yaml for a sample seat allocation.

How routing works:

1. Polarity pairs are separated across providers (hard constraint)
2. Members spread evenly across available providers
3. Per-member provider_affinity in frontmatter used as tiebreaker
4. 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 (see configs/provider-model-slots.example.yaml)

Deliberation Protocol

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.

<details> <summary><strong>Full protocol details</strong></summary>

Full Mode (7 steps)

1. Provider Detection & Routing — auto-detect providers, assign members
2. Problem Restate Gate — each member restates the problem + provides an alternative framing before analysis begins
3. Round 1: Independent Analysis (blind-first) — all members analyze in parallel (400 words max)
4. Round 2: Cross-Examination — members challenge each other (300 words, must engage 2+ others)
5. Post-Round Enforcement — dissent quota, novelty gate, agreement check, anti-recursion (single pass)
6. Round 3: Final Crystallization — 100-word position statements
7. Verdict Synthesis — leads with Unresolved Questions and Recommended Next Steps

Quick Mode

1. Problem Restate + Rapid Analysis — reframe + analyze in parallel (200 words max)
2. Final Positions — 75-word crystallization

Duo Mode

1. Problem Restate + Opening Positions — reframe + state positions (300 words)
2. Direct Response — engage opponent's claims (200 words)
3. Final Statements — 50-word positions

Enforcement Mechanisms

• Anti-recursion prevents Socrates from infinite questioning
• Dissent quota + novelty gate + counterfactual pass prevent premature convergence
• Tie-breaking uses 2/3 majority with domain expert weighting
• All verdicts include a Follow-Up section for outcome tracking

</details>

Installation

Installs 18 council agents plus skill files for Claude and/or Codex.

bashCopy
./install.sh                                   # Claude install (default)
./install.sh --codex                           # Claude + Codex skill install
./install.sh --codex-only                      # Codex-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 --dry-run                          # Preview without writing
./install.sh --copy-configs                     # Also install model routing templates

Restart your target client(s) after installing. Run ./scripts/council-simulation-checklist.sh to validate. Try the demo session pack to test all modes.

Requirements

• 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

Contributing

Contributions welcome. Read the contribution guidelines first.

Support the Project

If you find this project useful, consider supporting my open-source work.

Solana donations

BYLu8XD8hGDUtdRBWpGWu5HKoiPrWqCxYFSh4oxXuvPg

License

To the extent possible under law, the authors have waived all copyright and
related or neighboring rights to this work.

---

<p align="center"> <a href="https://star-history.com/#0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence&Date"> <img src="https://api.star-history.com/svg?repos=0xNyk/council-of-high-intelligence&type=Date" alt="Star History" width="400"> </a> </p>