Use Council when a decision would benefit from several perspectives and a clear recommendation. You brief a group of AI advisors, they form positions and challenge one another, and a chair brings the discussion together.
Council is useful for comparing options, testing assumptions, and identifying what evidence would change a decision. You remain responsible for choosing what to do and reviewing any work that follows.
Prepare a decision worth discussing
Open Council and start with What should the council decide? Write a specific question, the options you are considering, and the criteria that matter. Include practical constraints such as timing, available people, budget, or promises already made.
For example:
“Should we promote our beginner workshop through one email to existing subscribers or a short series of public posts? We have one person available this week, an approved workshop description, and no budget for paid promotion. Compare audience fit, preparation effort, and what we can learn. Recommend a first test, identify missing evidence, and explain what would change the recommendation.”
Replace the example's details with your actual situation. Separate confirmed facts from estimates and unknowns. If you already prefer an option, ask the advisors to test that preference rather than simply support it.
The question can contain up to 4,000 characters. Use the question for the decision itself and connect relevant saved sources separately. If you need to develop possible options first, start with Brainstorm.
Council sessions are shared with teammates who have Council access. There is no private-session option in this workflow. Review the question and selected sources with that audience in mind.
Connect relevant context
Open Context sources to choose saved information that materially affects the decision. Depending on what is available on your site, you can select sources such as Strategy plans, Brainstorm ideas, or Docs & blogs.
Select a source by clicking its row or switch. Check the selection summary before closing the panel. When the list offers search, use it to find the relevant source rather than connecting everything available.
Selected sources are retrieved when you submit the question and supplied as context to the advisors. They are separate from the question text you see in the brief. Choose only information you intend the configured AI providers to receive.
A selected source is useful background, not proof that its contents are current. Review important terms, audience assumptions, and constraints before relying on them. See Keeping strategy plans current when the decision depends on saved plans.
If some sources fail to load, read the notice and use Retry context sources. Your selections are preserved, but a partial list should not be mistaken for an empty library. Do not proceed with an important decision on the assumption that missing information was supplied.
Choose the advisors and depth
Open Council setup to review the room before convening. Council needs at least two available chat models configured in Providers. The advisor roster supports two to six seats, plus a chair.
Open an advisor's row or select Edit to adjust it:
- Role: the perspective the advisor should bring, such as customer experience, delivery, or risk.
- Lens: the area it should reason from. An advisor without its own lens uses the chair's lens.
- Model: the provider and model used for that seat.
- Mandate: what that advisor should examine or challenge, within the 500-character limit.
Give the advisors different jobs. For the workshop example, one could examine audience fit, another preparation effort, and another the assumptions behind the expected response. Different role names alone do not guarantee different or correct conclusions.
Use Add advisor when another perspective would help. Removing an advisor also removes the mandate written for that seat. Templates replace the roster and its mandates after confirmation, so keep any wording you want to reuse before applying one.
Open the Chair row to review its lens and model. The chair combines the advisors' contributions into the recommendation; it should not be treated as an independent verification of their factual claims.
Choose Deliberation depth:
- Structured debate — one challenge round gives the advisors an initial pass and a round of challenges before synthesis.
- Deep review — 2 to 5 revision rounds adds repeated review and revision before the chair finishes.
More seats and deeper review can increase AI usage and waiting time. Convening, follow-ups, and retries run the selected models; they are not free previews. Review AI usage and costs and choose a depth proportionate to the decision.
Setup changes save automatically. Watch the summary for Unsaved changes, Saving…, or Finish required fields to save. Every advisor needs a role name. If saving fails, use Retry save and check the result before leaving. Saving setup does not start a deliberation.
Convene and follow the discussion
When the brief, context, and room are ready:
- Review the question and make sure the options and constraints are clear.
- Check Context sources for the information you intend to include.
- Check Council setup, including advisor roles, the chair, models, and depth.
- Select Convene council once. You can also use ⌘/Ctrl + Enter from the question field.
- Follow the session as it moves through the deliberation, then review the recommendation.
An empty question or one over the limit produces a message at the field. A setup or permission problem appears in the page notices. If a request fails, check Session records before convening again: a session may already have been created even if its first question could not start.
The running session shows three stages: Initial positions, Challenge round, and Chair synthesis. Advisor cards show which contributions have arrived. Deep review includes additional revision rounds.
You can use Back to Council and return through Active deliberation → Open deliberation or the session's record. Leaving the page does not stop the work; it continues on the server.
Review the recommendation and disagreement
When the chair finishes, read Council recommendation. Check the proposed choice, the reasons for it, the trade-offs, and any important disagreement. Use Copy recommendation if you want to carry the memo into your own decision record.
Open How the council got here to inspect the contributions behind the memo. Open advisor brief shows an advisor's fuller response, including the rounds available for a deep review. Compare the reasoning when the recommendation depends on a disputed assumption.
Review the outcome against your original brief:
- Does it answer the actual decision, including the constraints?
- Which claims are supported, and which still need evidence?
- What did the strongest counterargument identify?
- What would make the recommended option unsuitable?
- Is the next step small enough to check before committing more resources?
An advisor can fail to respond while the remaining advisors still produce a recommendation. Read any missing-response notice; an absent perspective is not agreement. If the whole question fails or the chair does not finish, do not treat the partial responses as a completed recommendation.
The memo is advice. It does not publish content, spend a budget, contact a partner, or implement the choice. Record your decision, assign the next step through your normal workflow, and review that work separately.
Ask a follow-up or reopen a record
Once the room is no longer deliberating, use Ask a follow-up to challenge the recommendation or add relevant information. Select Ask the council or use ⌘/Ctrl + Enter when you are ready to run another question.
Useful follow-ups include “What evidence would reverse this recommendation?”, “Reassess with only half the preparation time,” or “Which part of this plan depends on an unverified assumption?” State the changed fact explicitly so it is clear what should be reconsidered.
Follow-ups can use earlier completed questions and recommendations as context. Long histories are shortened, so repeat any exact constraint, quotation, or source detail that the next answer must preserve. Do not assume every earlier advisor contribution or a newly edited source will be reread automatically. For a different decision or a different set of advisors, convene a new session.
Use Earlier questions within the session to revisit previous answers. On the overview, Session records lets you reopen past deliberations. Use the numbered pages and Search records… when available; search covers the saved records, not just the current page. Clear search restores the unfiltered list.
Resolve a blocked or incomplete session
Convene council or Ask the council is unavailable. Read the notice for view-only access, missing model setup, or work already in progress. Ask an administrator to check the configured chat models or your feature access.
A question does not submit. Check the message under the field for an empty question or the character limit. Correct the brief and submit once. If the error is a connection or provider problem, resolve it before repeating the request.
Setup will not save. Complete missing role names and check the selected models and chair. Use Retry save after a failure, and keep a copy of important mandates until the changes are saved.
The room is still working. Open the deliberation and read its stage and any warning. The follow-up composer is hidden while a question is active. If you intend to cancel that question, use Stop and confirm that its state becomes Stopped. Closing the page is not a substitute for stopping it.
The question failed or was stopped. Read the error and any partial contributions first. Use Try again only when you want another model run; check the reported state afterward. Retrying can incur further usage and may produce a different answer. Stopping does not undo work or usage already incurred.
The chair's memo is missing or incomplete. Check Chair synthesis and the overall question status. If it failed, resolve the reported cause before retrying. For persistent connection or provider failures, see Fixing an assistant that cannot complete a task.