Council

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Ask several AI models one question — they answer in parallel, critique each other blind, and you decide. Native macOS, bring-your-own-keys.

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<h1 align="center">Council</h1>

One question. A roundtable of AI minds. You decide. 
 A native macOS app that puts the same question to several LLMs, lets them
 critique each other blind, and shows you where they agree — and where they don't.

---

## The idea

Asking one model a hard question gives you one model's blind spots. Council convenes
a panel instead. The same prompt goes to several advisors at once — Claude, GPT,
Gemini and more — each answers independently, and then the interesting part begins.

## How it works

1. **Ask.** Pose a question to your council (three advisors; each seat can be any of twelve backends).
2. **Parallel answers.** Every advisor responds at once, streaming live in its own panel.
3. **Blind peer review.** Each advisor critiques the others' answers without knowing who wrote them — no brand bias, just the argument.
4. **Divergence — with a score.** A 0–100 read of how far apart the council landed, how many camps formed, and who the outlier is. It measures agreement, not correctness.
5. **Debate (optional).** One bounded rebuttal round: each advisor revises or holds, and says why. Who moved, who held.
6. **Synthesis & Dissent.** A decision-ready distillation — plus the outlier's full answer spotlighted, because the majority can be confidently wrong together.
7. **You decide — and log it.** Record your decision in the journal, and later, how it actually turned out.

### Bring an outside answer

Already have an answer from ChatGPT, Gemini, or anything else? Paste it in as a **guest seat**. It
takes a place at the table as one more anonymous advisor — the council critiques it blind, without
knowing it came from outside, and it counts in the divergence score, the dissent, and the synthesis.
One connected advisor plus a guest is already a council of two.

## Features

- 🧠 **Twelve backends** — Claude · GPT (OpenAI) · Gemini · DeepSeek · Grok (xAI) · Mistral · Perplexity · OpenRouter · Ollama (local, needs [Ollama](https://ollama.com) running) · Apple Intelligence (on-device, free — needs macOS 26 on Apple-silicon) · two **custom OpenAI-compatible endpoints** (llama.cpp, LM Studio, vLLM, a second Ollama box — with a test-connection button that pulls the server's real model list)
- ⚡ **Live streaming** answers, side by side
- 🎭 **Distinct personas** per seat (Analyst · Practitioner · Skeptic) for real divergence — not three ways of saying the same thing
- 🎭 **Guest seat** — paste an answer from any other AI; it's blind-reviewed as one more anonymous advisor
- ⚖️ **Neutral chair** (optional) — a model that moderates instead of answering: it writes the divergence and synthesis, and closes a debate with a neutral summary
- 😈 **Devil's Advocate** role to pressure-test the consensus
- 📊 **Divergence score** — 0–100 how far apart the council landed, camps, and the outlier; agreement, not correctness
- 🗣️ **Bounded debate** — one optional rebuttal round; original answers stay tucked underneath so you see what moved
- ☑️ **Selective deliberation** — after reading the answers, choose which of them go into peer review
- ❗ **Dissent** — the outlier's full answer, surfaced on its own to judge for yourself
- 📓 **Decision journal** — log what you chose, set a reminder, then come back and record how it turned out (local only)
- 🧭 **Two layouts** — Flow (one page; analysis appears beneath the answers) or Classic (each stage its own screen)
- 🖼️ **Vision** — drop in an image for the models that support it
- 📎 **Attach a document** — add a `.md`/`.txt` to your question (or drag it in) and the whole council reads it before weighing in; the file stays out of your saved history
- 💸 **Calm cost estimate** — a running token/$ tally, your spend at a glance, and an optional spend alert
- 📤 **Export** — Markdown, PDF, image, or a paste-ready **decision memo**; **share councils** as importable presets
- ⌨️ **`council` CLI** — the same engine in your terminal: pipe documents in, get JSON out, gate CI on divergence
- 🔄 **In-app updates** — new versions install from inside the app (it's an unsigned build, so macOS won't hand the new version the old one's Keychain items — Council asks you to re-enter your keys once, inline)
- 🔗 **Engram bridge** (optional) — if you already run [Engram](https://github.com/albertofettucini/Engram), a journal decision can be written into your local Engram store, so your other AI tools can recall it
- 💾 **Local history** of every session (CLI runs land there too)
- 🪟 **Native SwiftUI** — real Liquid Glass on macOS 26, a graceful material fallback on 14+

## Privacy — bring your own keys

Council is **100% local. No account, no server, no telemetry.**

- Your API keys live **only in the macOS Keychain.** They're masked in the UI and are **never** written to disk, exports, logs, or session files.
- Each key is sent **only** to that provider's own endpoint, over HTTPS. Local backends — Ollama and your own OpenAI-compatible servers — go wherever you point them, which is `localhost` unless you change it in Settings.
- You pay the providers directly with your own keys — Council never sits in the middle.

Don't have a key yet? Council links you straight to each provider's console from the key-entry step.

## Install

**Homebrew** — one command:

```sh
brew install --cask albertofettucini/council/council
```

**Or download** the macOS build from the [latest release](../../releases/latest), unzip it, and drag `Council.app` to Applications. Requires **macOS 14 or later**.

> ⚠️ **First launch:** Council isn't signed with a paid Apple certificate (it's a free, solo, open-source project), so macOS Gatekeeper warns once. To open it: **right-click `Council.app` → Open → Open**, or **System Settings → Privacy & Security → "Open Anyway"**. It opens normally after that. (Installing with Homebrew? Add `--no-quarantine` to skip this.)
>
> Rather build it yourself? The whole app is in this repo — see [Build from source](#build-from-source).

### Build from source

```sh
git clone https://github.com/albertofettucini/Council.git
cd Council
open Council.xcodeproj   # Xcode 16+ (Xcode 26 for the Liquid Glass build)
# ⌘R to run
```

Three SPM dependencies, all resolved automatically by Xcode: **Sparkle** (in-app updates), **CouncilKit** (the engine — a separate package at [github.com/albertofettucini/CouncilKit](https://github.com/albertofettucini/CouncilKit), shared with the CLI), and **Engram** (only for the optional decision-memory bridge). Otherwise pure SwiftUI + Foundation.

## CLI

The same engine, in your terminal — for scripting, CI, and piping documents in:

```sh
git clone https://github.com/albertofettucini/CouncilKit.git
cd CouncilKit && swift build -c release
cp .build/release/council /usr/local/bin/   # or anywhere on your PATH

council keys set claude                      # keys go to the macOS Keychain (shared with the app)
council "should we ship now or wait?" --seats claude,gpt,gemini
council "review this" --file design.md --md  # attach a document, get a decision memo
cat design.md | council "review this"        # …or pipe it in on stdin
council "..." --guest chatgpt-answer.txt     # seat an outside answer in the blind review
council "..." --chair claude                 # a neutral chair moderates instead of answering
council "..." --json                         # structured output (schema council.cli.v1)
council "..." --fail-above 40                # CI gate: exit 1 if the council diverges too much
```

CLI runs land in the app's history, so you can reopen them in the UI. `council --help` has the full flag list.

## A typical question

> *"Should a two-person startup adopt microservices on day one?"*

Claude weighs the trade-offs, GPT pushes back on premature complexity, Gemini brings
the ops angle. The peer-review round catches where one of them overreached, Divergence
shows the real fault line, and Synthesis hands you a decision-ready summary.

## Roadmap

- More local backends out of the box
- Recall past decisions when a new question resembles an old one

## Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. Council is one person's project — keep changes focused and the
privacy guarantees intact: no telemetry, and keys never leave the Keychain.

## Contact

Questions, ideas, or feedback? Open an issue — or reach me at **joseph.thecouncil@gmail.com**.

## More from the same maker

[**Engram**](https://github.com/albertofettucini/Engram) — one shared, local memory for all your AIs. Import your ChatGPT/Claude history once; every MCP client can recall it.

## License

---

Made for people who'd rather weigh a few good opinions than trust one.

Council

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