Agent skill

Council

Convene a four-voice council for ambiguous decisions, tradeoffs, and go/no-go calls.

MITAuto-check passedProduct & Project Management

Install Council

skills CLI

$ npx skills add affaan-m/ECC --skill council -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install affaan-m/ECC council --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/council .claude/skills/council && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Paste into Claude Code

Install the "council" agent skill from https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC/tree/main/skills/council into .claude/skills/council/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "council", then confirm the skill loads.

Claude Code copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

$skill-installer

$skill-installer install https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC/tree/main/skills/council

Type this inside Codex. $skill-installer <name> installs a curated skill from openai/skills. The installer writes to $CODEX_HOME/skills (default ~/.codex/skills). Restart Codex if the skill does not show up.

skills CLI

$ npx skills add affaan-m/ECC --skill council -a codex

Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.codex/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install affaan-m/ECC council --agent codex

Project scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC.git skills-src && mkdir -p .agents/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/council .agents/skills/council && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.agents/skills/ instead of .agents/skills for a personal install.

Codex skills documentation · loads skills from .agents/skills/

Paste into Codex

Install the "council" agent skill from https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC/tree/main/skills/council into .agents/skills/council/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "council", then confirm the skill loads.

Codex copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

skills CLI

$ npx skills add affaan-m/ECC --skill council -a cursor

Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.cursor/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install affaan-m/ECC council --agent cursor

Project scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC.git skills-src && mkdir -p .cursor/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/council .cursor/skills/council && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.cursor/skills/ instead of .cursor/skills for a personal install.

Cursor skills documentation · loads skills from .cursor/skills/, .agents/skills/, .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/

Paste into Cursor

Install the "council" agent skill from https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC/tree/main/skills/council into .cursor/skills/council/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "council", then confirm the skill loads.

Cursor copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

gemini skills install

$ gemini skills install https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC.git --path skills/council

--scope user (default) or --scope workspace; --path is the subfolder of the repo that holds the skill; --consent skips the security confirmation prompt.

skills CLI

$ npx skills add affaan-m/ECC --skill council -a gemini-cli

Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.gemini/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install affaan-m/ECC council --agent gemini-cli

Project scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC.git skills-src && mkdir -p .gemini/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/council .gemini/skills/council && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.gemini/skills/ instead of .gemini/skills for a personal install, then run /skills reload.

Gemini CLI skills documentation · loads skills from .gemini/skills/, .agents/skills/

Paste into Gemini CLI

Install the "council" agent skill from https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC/tree/main/skills/council into .gemini/skills/council/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "council", then confirm the skill loads.

Gemini CLI copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install affaan-m/ECC council

Installs for Copilot at project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Preview a skill first with gh skill preview. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

skills CLI

$ npx skills add affaan-m/ECC --skill council -a github-copilot

Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.copilot/skills/.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC.git skills-src && mkdir -p .github/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/council .github/skills/council && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.copilot/skills/ instead of .github/skills for a personal install. Commit .github/skills so cloud agent and code review can use it.

GitHub Copilot skills documentation · loads skills from .github/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/

Paste into GitHub Copilot

Install the "council" agent skill from https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC/tree/main/skills/council into .github/skills/council/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "council", then confirm the skill loads.

GitHub Copilot copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

skills CLI

$ npx skills add affaan-m/ECC --skill council -a opencode

OpenCode documents no install command of its own. Project install goes to .agents/skills/; add -g for ~/.config/opencode/skills/.

GitHub CLI

$ gh skill install affaan-m/ECC council --agent opencode

Project scope by default (.agents/skills/); add --scope user for a personal install.

Manual copy

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC.git skills-src && mkdir -p .opencode/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/council .opencode/skills/council && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.config/opencode/skills/ instead of .opencode/skills for a personal install.

OpenCode skills documentation · loads skills from .opencode/skills/, .claude/skills/, .agents/skills/

Paste into OpenCode

Install the "council" agent skill from https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC/tree/main/skills/council into .opencode/skills/council/ in this project. Copy the whole folder (SKILL.md and every file beside it), keep the folder name "council", then confirm the skill loads.

OpenCode copies the folder itself, the same result as the manual copy. Check what it changed before you commit it.

Facts

Skill name: council
GitHub stars: 277k
Used in: 2 other repos
Token cost: ~1.6k tokens
SKILL.md length: 702 words
Files: 1
Skills in repo: 683
Repo updated: Oct 11, 2026
First seen: Oct 7, 2026
Licence: MIT

At a glance

Convene a four-voice council for ambiguous decisions, tradeoffs, and go/no-go calls.

Works in 6 steps: Extract the real question → Gather only the necessary context → Form the Architect position first → …
Multiple valid paths exist and you need structured disagreement before choosing
SKILL.md covers When to Use, When NOT to Use, Roles and Workflow, plus 5 more sections
Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Council is an agent skill from affaan-m/ECC. Convene a four-voice council for ambiguous decisions, tradeoffs, and go/no-go calls. Use when multiple valid paths exist and you need structured disagreement before choosing.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.6k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Product & Project Management, covering Feature launches and release readiness. The repository describes itself as: The agent harness performance optimization system. Skills, instincts, memory, security, and research-first development for Claude Code, Codex, Opencode, Cursor and beyond. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

Multiple valid paths exist and you need structured disagreement before choosing
Tasks that involve Feature launches and release readiness

Example prompts

“/council”

Workflow steps

6 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

Extract the real question
Gather only the necessary context
Form the Architect position first
Launch three independent voices in parallel
Synthesize with bias guardrails
Present a compact verdict

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 2d515e4. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

Tool permissions
Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.
From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.
Runs code
No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are markdown).
From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.
Network
No URLs in SKILL.md.
From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.
Credentials
Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.
From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Council loads about 1.6k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 46 tokens; SKILL.md has 702 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it: ~46
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches: ~1.6k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from affaan-m/ECC at commit 2d515e4, republished under its MIT licence (© affaan-m). 702 words, ~1,586 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/council/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).

name: council
description: Convene a four-voice council for ambiguous decisions, tradeoffs, and go/no-go calls. Use when multiple valid paths exist and you need structured disagreement before choosing.
metadata.origin: ECC

Council

Convene four advisors for ambiguous decisions:

the in-context Claude voice
a Skeptic subagent
a Pragmatist subagent
a Critic subagent

This is for decision-making under ambiguity, not code review, implementation planning, or architecture design.

When to Use

Use council when:

a decision has multiple credible paths and no obvious winner
you need explicit tradeoff surfacing
the user asks for second opinions, dissent, or multiple perspectives
conversational anchoring is a real risk
a go / no-go call would benefit from adversarial challenge

Examples:

monorepo vs polyrepo
ship now vs hold for polish
feature flag vs full rollout
simplify scope vs keep strategic breadth

When NOT to Use

Instead of council	Use
Verifying whether output is correct	`santa-method`
Breaking a feature into implementation steps	`planner`
Designing system architecture	`architect`
Reviewing code for bugs or security	`code-reviewer` or `santa-method`
Straight factual questions	just answer directly
Obvious execution tasks	just do the task

Roles

Voice	Lens
Architect	correctness, maintainability, long-term implications
Skeptic	premise challenge, simplification, assumption breaking
Pragmatist	shipping speed, user impact, operational reality
Critic	edge cases, downside risk, failure modes

The three external voices should be launched as fresh subagents with only the question and relevant context, not the full ongoing conversation. That is the anti-anchoring mechanism.

Workflow

1. Extract the real question

Reduce the decision to one explicit prompt:

what are we deciding?
what constraints matter?
what counts as success?

If the question is vague, ask one clarifying question before convening the council.

2. Gather only the necessary context

If the decision is codebase-specific:

collect the relevant files, snippets, issue text, or metrics
keep it compact
include only the context needed to make the decision

If the decision is strategic/general:

skip repo snippets unless they materially change the answer

3. Form the Architect position first

Before reading other voices, write down:

your initial position
the three strongest reasons for it
the main risk in your preferred path

Do this first so the synthesis does not simply mirror the external voices.

4. Launch three independent voices in parallel

Each subagent gets:

the decision question
compact context if needed
a strict role
no unnecessary conversation history

Prompt shape:

text

You are the [ROLE] on a four-voice decision council.

Question:
[decision question]

Context:
[only the relevant snippets or constraints]

Respond with:
1. Position — 1-2 sentences
2. Reasoning — 3 concise bullets
3. Risk — biggest risk in your recommendation
4. Surprise — one thing the other voices may miss

Be direct. No hedging. Keep it under 300 words.

Role emphasis:

Skeptic: challenge framing, question assumptions, propose the simplest credible alternative
Pragmatist: optimize for speed, simplicity, and real-world execution
Critic: surface downside risk, edge cases, and reasons the plan could fail

5. Synthesize with bias guardrails

You are both a participant and the synthesizer, so use these rules:

do not dismiss an external view without explaining why
if an external voice changed your recommendation, say so explicitly
always include the strongest dissent, even if you reject it
if two voices align against your initial position, treat that as a real signal
keep the raw positions visible before the verdict

Show full SKILL.md (249 more words)Show less

6. Present a compact verdict

Use this output shape:

markdown

## Council: [short decision title]

**Architect:** [1-2 sentence position]
[1 line on why]

**Skeptic:** [1-2 sentence position]
[1 line on why]

**Pragmatist:** [1-2 sentence position]
[1 line on why]

**Critic:** [1-2 sentence position]
[1 line on why]

### Verdict
- **Consensus:** [where they align]
- **Strongest dissent:** [most important disagreement]
- **Premise check:** [did the Skeptic challenge the question itself?]
- **Recommendation:** [the synthesized path]

Keep it scannable on a phone screen.

Persistence Rule

Do not write ad-hoc notes to ~/.claude/notes or other shadow paths from this skill.

If the council materially changes the recommendation:

use knowledge-ops to store the lesson in the right durable location
or use /save-session if the outcome belongs in session memory
or update the relevant GitHub / Linear issue directly if the decision changes active execution truth

Only persist a decision when it changes something real.

Multi-Round Follow-up

Default is one round.

If the user wants another round:

keep the new question focused
include the previous verdict only if it is necessary
keep the Skeptic as clean as possible to preserve anti-anchoring value

Anti-Patterns

using council for code review
using council when the task is just implementation work
feeding the subagents the entire conversation transcript
hiding disagreement in the final verdict
persisting every decision as a note regardless of importance

santa-method — adversarial verification
knowledge-ops — persist durable decision deltas correctly
search-first — gather external reference material before the council if needed
architecture-decision-records — formalize the outcome when the decision becomes long-lived system policy

Example

Question:

text

Should we ship ECC 2.0 as alpha now, or hold until the control-plane UI is more complete?

Likely council shape:

Architect pushes for structural integrity and avoiding a confused surface
Skeptic questions whether the UI is actually the gating factor
Pragmatist asks what can be shipped now without harming trust
Critic focuses on support burden, expectation debt, and rollout confusion

The value is not unanimity. The value is making the disagreement legible before choosing.

Files

Just SKILL.md in skills/council of affaan-m/ECC.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 2d515e4

Used in 2 other repositories

We found 3 copies of this SKILL.md (exact, near-identical or edited) in other folders, from 2 other GitHub owners. This page covers the copy in affaan-m/ECC, which our catalogue first saw on October 7, 2026.

Compare with similar skills

Council next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Council compared with similar skills
Skill	Stars	Used in	Tokens	Auto-check	Licence	Repo updated
Council this skillaffaan-m/ECC	277k	2 repos	~1.6k	Automated safety check: Pass	MIT	today
.NET MAUI Release Readinessdotnet/maui	23k	—	~15k	Automated safety check: Pass	MIT	yesterday
Release ValidationMesh-LLM/mesh-llm	3.5k	—	~2.6k	Automated safety check: Pass	Apache-2.0	today
Final Release Reviewopenai/openai-agents-python	30k	—	~5.4k	Automated safety check: Pass	MIT	2 days ago
Final Release Reviewopenai/openai-agents-js	3.9k	—	~4k	Automated safety check: Pass	MIT	yesterday
Acceptance Demo GeneratorChachamaru127/claude-code-harness	3.2k	—	~3.4k	Automated safety check: Notes	MIT	6 days ago

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Questions about Council

What does Council do?

Convene a four-voice council for ambiguous decisions, tradeoffs, and go/no-go calls. Council is an agent skill from affaan-m/ECC. Convene a four-voice council for ambiguous decisions, tradeoffs, and go/no-go calls.

When should I use Council?

Council fits situations like: multiple valid paths exist and you need structured disagreement before choosing; tasks that involve Feature launches and release readiness.

How do I install Council in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add affaan-m/ECC --skill council -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/council in affaan-m/ECC) into .claude/skills/council in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Council in Codex?

Run `npx skills add affaan-m/ECC --skill council -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/council in affaan-m/ECC) into .agents/skills/council in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Council in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add affaan-m/ECC --skill council -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/council, .gemini/skills/council, .github/skills/council and .opencode/skills/council in your project.

What does Council need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Council is instructions for the agent only.

Does Council access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Council safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Council use?

Council is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Council use?

About 1.6k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 6.3k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Council?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Council: .NET MAUI Release Readiness (dotnet/maui, 23k stars), Release Validation (Mesh-LLM/mesh-llm, 3.5k stars), Final Release Review (openai/openai-agents-python, 30k stars) and Final Release Review (openai/openai-agents-js, 3.9k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Council?

affaan-m (a GitHub user) maintains it in affaan-m/ECC, which has 276,673 GitHub stars. The repository holds 683 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 11, 2026.

Source: affaan-m/ECC on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.

Install Council

Facts

At a glance

What it does

When your agent uses it

Example prompts

Workflow steps

What it can do on your machine

Tool permissions

Runs code

Network

Credentials

Context cost

Safety

SKILL.md

Council

When to Use

When NOT to Use

Roles

Workflow

1. Extract the real question

2. Gather only the necessary context

3. Form the Architect position first

4. Launch three independent voices in parallel

5. Synthesize with bias guardrails

6. Present a compact verdict

Persistence Rule

Multi-Round Follow-up

Anti-Patterns

Related Skills

Example

Files

Used in 2 other repositories

Compare with similar skills

Similar skills

More from affaan-m/ECC

Related

Questions about Council