LLM Council
Run any decision through 5 independent AI advisors who analyze, peer-review each other, and synthesize a final verdict.
You ask one AI a question, you get one answer — and no way to know if it's great or mid. The LLM Council fixes this by running your hardest decisions through 5 independent advisors, a blind peer-review round, and a chairman synthesis that tells you exactly where the perspectives converge, where they clash, and what you should actually do.
Who it's for: founders, solopreneurs, product managers, strategists, executives, consultants, anyone facing high-stakes decisions
Example
"Council this: should I launch a $297 course or a $97 workshop first?" → Full council report with 5 advisor perspectives, peer review highlights, and a chairman verdict with one concrete next step
CLAUDE.md Template
New here? 3-minute setup guide → | Already set up? Copy the template below.
npx ccplaybooks add llm-council# LLM Council — Multi-Advisor Decision Framework
You are the facilitator of an LLM Council, inspired by Andrej Karpathy's methodology. When the user brings a question or decision, run it through 5 independent advisors, a peer-review round, and a chairman synthesis. Produce a visual HTML report and a full Markdown transcript.
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## Trigger Phrases
Run the council when you see: "council this", "run the council", "war room this", "pressure-test this", "stress-test this", "debate this", or when the user presents a genuine decision with meaningful tradeoffs and says things like "should I X or Y", "which option", "I can't decide", "validate this", "get multiple perspectives".
Do NOT run for simple yes/no questions, factual lookups, or trivial "should I" questions without real stakes.
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What This Does
The LLM Council is a structured multi-perspective decision framework inspired by Andrej Karpathy's methodology. Instead of asking one AI for one answer, it routes your question through five independent advisors — each thinking from a fundamentally different angle — then runs a blind peer-review round, and finally synthesizes everything into a chairman's verdict.
The output is a visual HTML report and a full Markdown transcript. The report shows where advisors agreed, where they clashed, what blind spots the peer review surfaced, a clear recommendation, and one concrete next step.
Use it for decisions where being wrong is expensive: pricing, positioning, pivots, hiring, product direction, copy critique, launch strategy.
Quick Start
Step 1: Create a Project Folder
Create a folder for the decision you want to council (e.g., ~/decisions/launch-strategy).
Step 2: Download the Template
Click Download above and save the file as CLAUDE.md in that folder.
Step 3: Open in Claude Code and Run
Open the folder in Claude Code and type your decision. Use any trigger phrase:
Council this: [your decision]War room this: [your question]Pressure-test this: [your idea]Run the council on: [your dilemma]
Claude will frame the question, spawn all 5 advisors in parallel, run the peer review round, synthesize a chairman's verdict, and save two files — an HTML report and a Markdown transcript — in your project folder.
The Five Advisors
Each advisor represents a distinct thinking style that naturally creates tension with the others:
The Contrarian assumes the idea has a fatal flaw and tries to find it. Not a pessimist — the advisor who saves you from a bad deal by asking the questions you're avoiding.
The First Principles Thinker strips away assumptions and rebuilds the problem from the ground up. Often the most valuable output is "you're asking the wrong question entirely."
The Expansionist hunts for upside everyone else is missing — bigger plays, adjacent opportunities, undervalued angles. Ignores risk entirely (that's the Contrarian's job).
The Outsider has zero context about you, your field, or your history. Catches the curse of knowledge: things obvious to you that are confusing to everyone else. The most underrated advisor.
The Executor only cares about one thing: can this actually be done, and what's the fastest path? Asks "what do you do Monday morning?" for every idea.
The natural tensions — Contrarian vs. Expansionist (downside vs. upside), First Principles vs. Executor (rethink everything vs. just do it) — are what make the synthesis valuable.
What You Get
Two files saved to your project folder after each council session:
council-report-[timestamp].html — A clean, scannable visual report with the chairman's verdict prominently displayed, an agreement/disagreement breakdown across advisors, and collapsible sections for each advisor's full response and peer review highlights.
council-transcript-[timestamp].md — The full council record: original question, framed question, all 5 advisor responses, all 5 peer reviews (with the anonymization mapping revealed), and the chairman's complete synthesis.
Tips & Best Practices
Good council questions have genuine uncertainty and high cost-of-error:
- "Should I launch a $97 workshop or a $497 course?"
- "Which of these 3 positioning angles is strongest?"
- "I'm thinking of pivoting from X to Y. Am I crazy?"
- "Here's my landing page copy. What's weak?"
Bad council questions have one right answer or no real decision:
- "What's the capital of France?" — factual, no perspectives needed
- "Write me a tweet" — creation task, not a judgment call
- "Summarize this article" — processing task
Add context to your workspace. The council reads any CLAUDE.md, memory/ folder, or files you reference before framing the question. The richer the context, the more specific and grounded the advisor responses. A CLAUDE.md with your business stage, audience, and recent results will dramatically outperform a cold council session.
The chairman can disagree with the majority. If 4 out of 5 advisors say "do it" but the one dissenter has the strongest reasoning, the chairman will side with the dissenter and explain why. Trust the synthesis, not the vote count.
Re-council after changes. Previous transcripts are saved in your folder. If you revise your strategy and want to re-run, the council can reference what changed and how the thinking evolved.
How the Peer Review Works
After all 5 advisors respond, their answers are anonymized (shuffled to Response A–E) and each advisor reviews the full set. Each reviewer answers:
- Which response is the strongest, and why?
- Which response has the biggest blind spot?
- What did ALL five responses miss?
This is the step that makes the council more than "ask 5 times." Blind review eliminates deference to known thinking styles. The "what did everyone miss" question consistently surfaces the most actionable insight — the thing that only becomes visible when you're looking at all perspectives at once.