LLM Council Skill (v0.8.4) Skill

LLM Council Skill (v0.8.4)

Multi-model council: parallel drafts, adversarial critique, validated synthesis.

This skill requires the the-llm-council package to be installed. The skill provides the agent-side interface; actual runs happen through the installed council CLI.

Agent Invocation Contract

For tool-driven runs, read the portable invocation contract before execution. It requires Council 0.8.4 or later and applies to Codex, Claude Code, Hermes and generic subprocess callers. Use an explicit executable/CWD, task-file or stdin input, ordered providers/models, a unique result file, and wait for completion. Inspect execution_status and full diagnostics; exit 0 or success: true alone is not a complete review. Never retry a still-running run. Inspect delivered source/draft coverage, including profile-0 compaction. Only submitted evidence cuts count toward compaction-based degradation; synthesis_attempts counts adapter starts, not queued requests. Inspect cancellation evidence, artifact occurrences and persistence diagnostics. Ingestion counts do not prove delivery; Council pipeline cuts are not source defects. A hard-killed run can leave a running ledger row without a live process; do not automatically repair the row or restart the run. The contract explains CLI/library runtime identity and the started/settled execution manifests. The settled snapshot precedes ledger finalization, so read the terminal ledger separately; snapshots are not a heartbeat or repair service.

The built-in reviewer keeps prepared-coverage metadata separate from source evidence in critique/synthesis prompts; this added boundary does not apply to security/custom schemas. Schema-validation exhaustion fails with drafts, critique and errors preserved, rather than manufacturing findings from prose. Invalid raw synthesis is artifact-only if storage succeeds. Exception-triggered fallback to a schema-valid JSON draft remains degraded; valid JSON does not prove semantic truth.

Setup

Install the package:

pip install 'the-llm-council>=0.8.4'

Optional extras:

pip install 'the-llm-council[anthropic,openai,gemini]>=0.8.4'
pip install 'the-llm-council[vertex]>=0.8.4'

These commands require a published release. For an existing pinned uv tool, follow the portable contract's exact-version reinstall procedure; an isolated test install does not update the executable used by real callers.

Configure at least one provider key:

| Provider | Environment Variable | |----------|----------------------| | OpenRouter | OPENROUTER_API_KEY | | OpenAI | OPENAI_API_KEY | | Anthropic | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | | Gemini API | GOOGLE_API_KEY or GEMINI_API_KEY | | Vertex AI | GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT or ANTHROPIC_VERTEX_PROJECT_ID + ADC |

Verify what is usable in the current shell:

council doctor
council doctor --deep --provider claude --provider gemini-cli --provider codex

Canonical Surface

council run <subagent> [--mode <mode>] "<task>" [options]

Primary subagents:

| Subagent | Modes | Use for | |----------|-------|---------| | drafter | impl, arch, test | implementation, architecture, tests | | critic | review, security | code review and security analysis | | planner | plan, assess | execution plans and decision assessments | | researcher | — | research with sources and evidence | | router | — | task classification and routed handoff | | synthesizer | — | final merged output |

Legacy aliases such as implementer, architect, reviewer, red-team, assessor, test-designer, and shipper still work, but they are no longer the preferred interface.

Common Commands

# Implementation
council run drafter --mode impl "Add pagination to users API"

# Architecture
council run drafter --mode arch "Design a caching layer"

# Tests
council run drafter --mode test "Design tests for cursor pagination"

# Review
council run critic --mode review "Review auth changes"

# Security
council run critic --mode security "Analyze auth system vulnerabilities"

# Planning
council run planner --mode plan "Plan MongoDB to PostgreSQL migration"

# Assessment
council run planner --mode assess "Redis vs Memcached for sessions"

# Research
council run researcher "Research WebSocket libraries for Node.js"

# Router handoff
council run router "Should we buy or build auth?" --route

Useful Options

| Option | Purpose | |--------|---------| | --mode <mode> | Select a runtime mode for drafter, critic, or planner | | --json | Return structured JSON | | --verbose | Show resolved execution details and council phases | | --providers | Explicit provider list. Omit to use config defaults | | --models | Explicit model list | | --runtime-profile bounded | Lower latency and token budgets | | --timeout | Per-attempt seconds, 10-3600 (default 120); use the default runtime profile for long deadlines | | --reasoning-profile off\|light | Request reduced reasoning; inspect provider compilation metadata for unsupported or uncontrolled native effort | | --route | Follow a router decision into the chosen subagent/mode | | --files | Add file context, capped at 50,000 characters/file and 200,000 retained characters total | | --dry-run | Show the resolved plan without executing | | --schema | Use a custom output schema |

These file limits count characters, not KB. Per-file overflow truncates input; total retained overflow fails before calls. Inspect execution_plan.context_preparation.files and degradation_report.context_warnings; never present truncated input as a full review. Context warnings remain visible with graceful degradation disabled. The caller's outer deadline must cover the whole workflow, not just one attempt. The bounded profile retains shorter phase caps regardless of a larger timeout. Successful deep doctor probes prove reachability, not large-review completion or quality. Codex base doctor success reports login status only, not generation readiness.

Provider Names

Canonical provider names:

openrouter
openai
anthropic
gemini
gemini-cli
vertex-ai
claude
codex

User-selected providers and models should be respected. Health checks and deep doctor probes are for diagnostics, not for silently overriding explicit configuration.

--models accepts literal IDs in provider order, not provider:model mappings such as codex:gpt-5.4. Keep official slash namespaces and colon suffixes such as openai/gpt-5.4 and qwen/qwen3.6-plus:free intact. Runtime identity must distinguish the selected executable/version from the requested model; the latter is not a provider-confirmed model identity.

Claude Code admission is capability-based, not pinned to builds: each call checks the selected binary's help for required controls, including the chosen auth mode and optional effort. Report missing controls and the observed path/version; never drop isolation flags to continue. Base doctor proves advertised syntax only, not authentication, isolation semantics or generation. New builds are not rejected just because their version is unfamiliar. See the invocation contract. Codex retains the exact list 0.149.1/0.153.3/0.160.1; unknown Codex builds remain unsupported. Never edit package constants to bypass its gate. Synthetic checks are not live-provider or universal future compatibility proof. Fresh contained native checks cover Codex 0.149.1 and 0.160.1; 0.153.3 has synthetic coverage, not a fresh native run. The unchanged gpt-5.4 default is absent from the tested 0.160.1 catalog: explicitly select a supported model via --models or provider configuration. The 0.160.1 native checks used gpt-6.1-sol, not every model. Exact-version tool controls preserve authentication, selected model and reasoning effort.

When To Use It

Use council for:

non-trivial implementation work
architecture and system design
code review and security analysis
planning and build-vs-buy style decisions
research that benefits from multiple models critiquing each other

Skip it for:

trivial one-line edits
simple lookups
tasks where a single direct model call is clearly enough

Agent Skills: LLM Council Skill (v0.8.4)

Install this agent skill to your local

Skill Files