council
Send one prompt to multiple AI backends in parallel and collect their responses for synthesis. Use for architectural trade-offs or controversial decisions where diverse perspectives matter.
Instructions
Pose one prompt to several AI backends in parallel and return all of their responses for Claude to synthesize. Backend selection is driven by topic, which maps to a declared capability rather than to any lane name: the usable lanes declaring that capability are preferred, and the remaining usable lanes fill the rest of the seats. An operator-configured roster for a topic overrides that entirely. confidence_needed controls how many backends are queried — high (4), medium (3), low (2). Use for architectural trade-offs, controversial calls, or anywhere dissent surfaced cheaply (~1-2s for 2-3 backends) is more useful than a single answer. For a single backend query, use ask. Read-only: makes N parallel HTTP calls; never writes to disk. Returns: {success, topic, strategy, confidence_needed, backends_queried:[names], backends_responded:[names of those that succeeded], responses:[{backend, success, content, response_time, error?}], processing_time_ms, metrics, synthesis_hint (suggestion to Claude on how to synthesize)}.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| topic | Yes | Topic category — determines which capability the council prefers when picking lanes, never which lane by name: coding → code_specialized, reasoning and architecture → deep_reasoning, security → security_focus, performance and creative → fast_generation, general → no preference (any usable lane). Lanes declaring the wanted capability are seated first; other usable lanes fill the remaining seats, so a council still convenes when only one lane matches. | |
| prompt | Yes | The question or topic for the council to deliberate on | |
| max_tokens | No | Maximum tokens per backend response | |
| num_backends | No | Override number of backends to query (optional - auto-calculated from confidence_needed) | |
| confidence_needed | No | Required confidence level - determines number of backends: high (4 backends), medium (3 backends), low (2 backends) | medium |