paladin council - Quick Group Discussions

Execute quick multi-agent discussions without writing configuration files. Get diverse perspectives from multiple AI Paladins on any topic.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Quick Start
• Command Syntax
• Agent Roles
• Discussion Rounds
• Output Options
• Best Practices
• Examples
• Troubleshooting

Overview

The council command enables:

• Ad-hoc multi-agent discussions without configuration files
• Diverse perspectives from multiple AI personas
• Multi-round discussions bounded by --max-rounds
• Transcript saving to a file with --save
• Quick iterations for brainstorming and decision-making

When to Use Council

✅ Use council when:

• Need quick input from multiple AI perspectives
• Brainstorming solutions to problems
• Evaluating options from different viewpoints
• Quick analysis without formal configuration
• Prototyping multi-agent workflows

❌ Don't use council when:

• Need precise control over agent configuration
• Building production workflows (use paladin run instead)
• Require state persistence across sessions
• Need custom tools or memory systems

Quick Start

Basic Usage

# Simple discussion with default agents
paladin council --topic "What are the best practices for API design?"

# Specify number of participants
paladin council --topic "Should we migrate to microservices?" --participants 5

# Bound the number of discussion rounds
paladin council --topic "Analyze this business proposal..." --max-rounds 2

# Save the transcript to a file
paladin council --topic "Security implications of cloud migration" --save results.md

Command Syntax

The council subcommand takes no positional argument; the discussion topic is passed with --topic. Build the binary with the cli feature before capturing this output yourself: cargo build --release --features cli --bin paladin-cli (the binary carries required-features = ["cli"] and is not produced by a default cargo build).

$ paladin-cli council --help
Run a council discussion

Usage: paladin-cli council [OPTIONS]

Options:
      --topic <TOPIC>                Discussion topic
      --participants <PARTICIPANTS>  Number of participants (2-10) [default: 3]
      --roles <ROLES>                Custom roles (comma-separated)
      --max-rounds <MAX_ROUNDS>      Maximum discussion rounds [default: 5]
      --save <SAVE>                  Save transcript to file
      --model <MODEL>                Model to use
      --temperature <TEMPERATURE>    Temperature setting
      --quiet                        Enable quiet mode (minimal output)
      --verbose                      Enable verbose mode (detailed output)
  -h, --help                         Print help

--quiet and --verbose are global flags shared by every subcommand.

Agent Roles

Default Roles

When roles aren't specified, council uses diverse default perspectives:

1. Analyst - Data-driven, analytical approach
2. Critic - Identifies risks, challenges, and weaknesses
3. Optimist - Focuses on opportunities and benefits

Custom Roles

# Technical perspectives
paladin council --topic "System design question" --roles "architect,security,devops,qa"

# Business perspectives
paladin council --topic "Product launch strategy" --roles "ceo,cfo,cmo,product"

# Creative perspectives
paladin council --topic "Marketing campaign" --roles "creative,pragmatic,critic,synthesizer"

# Domain-specific
paladin council --topic "Data governance policy" --roles "legal,compliance,privacy,security"

Role Examples

Discussion Rounds

The live council subcommand has no discussion-mode flag — there is no parallel, sequential or debate mode to select. Instead, --participants sets how many agents join the discussion and --max-rounds bounds how many rounds the discussion runs for (default: 5 rounds, 3 participants).

# Fewer rounds for a quick read
paladin council --topic "What are the pros and cons of NoSQL?" --max-rounds 2

# More rounds for a deeper discussion
paladin council --topic "How should we approach this technical debt?" --max-rounds 8

# More participants for broader coverage
paladin council --topic "Should we use serverless architecture?" --participants 6

Output Options

The council subcommand has one output flag, --save <FILE>, which writes the discussion transcript to a file. There is no --format flag — the live subcommand exposes no JSON or plain text output option.

paladin council --topic "Cloud strategy" --save discussion.md

# Council Discussion: Cloud Strategy

## Question
What cloud strategy should we adopt?

## Participants
- Technical Architect
- Business Analyst  
- Security Specialist

## Responses

### Technical Architect
**Perspective:** Technical Implementation

[Response content...]

**Key Points:**
- Multi-cloud for redundancy
- Containerization strategy
- Migration roadmap

### Business Analyst
**Perspective:** Business Value

[Response content...]

**Key Points:**
- Cost optimization
- Scalability benefits
- Time to market

### Security Specialist
**Perspective:** Security & Compliance

[Response content...]

**Key Points:**
- Data sovereignty
- Encryption standards
- Compliance requirements

## Synthesis

[Synthesized recommendations...]

## Action Items

1. Evaluate cloud providers
2. Conduct security audit
3. Create migration plan

Best Practices

1. Frame Topics Clearly

✅ Good:

paladin council --topic "
Should we adopt GraphQL for our public API?

Context:
- RESTful API with 50+ endpoints
- 100k requests/day
- Mobile and web clients
- Team of 5 backend developers
"

❌ Avoid:

paladin council --topic "graphql?"

2. Choose Appropriate Roles

# For technical decisions
paladin council --topic "Kubernetes vs. ECS" --roles "architect,security,devops"

# For product decisions
paladin council --topic "Feature prioritization" --roles "product,ux,engineering,business"

# For strategic decisions
paladin council --topic "Market expansion strategy" --roles "ceo,cto,cfo,cmo"

3. Tune Participants and Rounds

# Quick diverse input → fewer participants, fewer rounds
paladin council --topic "Initial thoughts on blockchain integration" --participants 3 --max-rounds 2

# Building on ideas over more rounds
paladin council --topic "Refine our architecture approach" --max-rounds 8

# Broader coverage for evaluating alternatives
paladin council --topic "Build vs. buy for authentication" --participants 6

4. Save the Transcript

# Save the discussion transcript
paladin council --topic "Complex decision" --save results.md
# Then review results.md for the discussion history

5. Iterate and Refine

# First pass - broad input
paladin council --topic "App architecture options" --save round1.md

# Review results, then deep dive
paladin council --topic "Microservices concerns from round 1" --save round2.md

# Final decision, more rounds for depth
paladin council --topic "Final architecture decision" --max-rounds 8 --save final.md

Examples

Example 1: Quick Technical Decision

paladin council --participants 4 --topic "
Should we use TypeScript or JavaScript for our new service?

Context:
- Team has JavaScript experience
- Large codebase (100k+ LOC)
- Need to maintain velocity
- Some junior developers
"

Example 2: Security Review

paladin council --roles "security,privacy,compliance,devops" --max-rounds 6 --topic "
Review our authentication approach:

Current:
- JWT tokens
- 1-hour expiration  
- Stored in localStorage
- No refresh tokens

Concerns:
- XSS vulnerability?
- CSRF protection?
- Mobile app considerations?
"

Example 3: Architecture Trade-off Discussion

paladin council --roles "monolith-advocate,microservices-advocate" --max-rounds 6 --topic "
Should we migrate from monolith to microservices?

Current state:
- Monolithic Rails app
- 5-year-old codebase
- 10 developers
- Deployment issues
- Scaling challenges
"

Example 4: Product Strategy

paladin council --roles "product,marketing,sales,engineering,support" --save strategy.md --topic "
Should we build a mobile app or focus on responsive web?

Data:
- 60% mobile traffic
- Limited mobile team
- 6-month timeline
- Competitor has native apps
"

Example 5: Incident Post-Mortem

paladin council --roles "sre,security,engineering,management" --topic "
Post-mortem for database outage:

Incident:
- 2-hour downtime
- Caused by failed migration
- No rollback plan
- Manual recovery

Questions:
- What went wrong?
- How to prevent?
- Process improvements?
"

Example 6: Code Review Perspectives

paladin council --roles "security,performance,maintainability,testing" --topic "
Review this architecture decision:

Plan to use Redis for:
- Session storage
- Cache layer  
- Message queue
- Rate limiting

Is this appropriate?
"

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

Issue: Responses are too generic

Solution:

# Provide more context
paladin council --topic "Question with detailed context: ..."

# Use more specific roles
paladin council --roles "senior-architect,principal-engineer" --topic "..."

# Increase rounds for depth
paladin council --max-rounds 8 --topic "..."

Issue: Conflicting perspectives without resolution

Solution:

# Increase participants for more coverage
paladin council --participants 6 --topic "..."

# Do a follow-up round
paladin council --topic "Based on previous discussion, recommend best approach"

Issue: Discussion runs too long

Solution:

# Reduce the number of discussion rounds
paladin council --max-rounds 2 --topic "complex question"

# Reduce the number of participants
paladin council --participants 2 --topic "..."

Issue: Not enough detail in responses

Solution:

# Increase the number of discussion rounds
paladin council --max-rounds 8 --topic "detailed analysis needed"

# Ask more specific topics
paladin council --topic "Specific aspect of broader topic"

# Use higher temperature for creativity
paladin council --temperature 1.0 --topic "creative problem-solving"

Issue: Agent perspectives are too similar

Solution:

# Use more diverse roles
paladin council --roles "conservative,progressive,radical,pragmatic" --topic "..."

# Increase rounds so agents can diverge
paladin council --max-rounds 6 --topic "..."

# Increase temperature
paladin council --temperature 1.2 --topic "diverse viewpoints needed"

Debugging

# Enable verbose mode to see execution details
paladin council --verbose --topic "..."

# Test with a simpler topic first
paladin council --participants 2 --topic "Hello, how are you?"

# Check provider configuration
paladin setup-check

Advanced Usage

Combining with Other Commands

# Generate config, then discuss it
paladin muster --task "workflow" --output workflow.yaml
paladin council --topic "Review this workflow config: $(cat workflow.yaml)"

# Council for planning, then generate and execute the resulting config
paladin council --topic "Best approach for task X" --save plan.md
# Review plan.md, then generate and run the battalion config in one step
paladin muster --task "$(cat plan.md)" --execute

Batch Processing

# Multiple topics from file
while IFS= read -r topic; do
    paladin council --topic "$topic" --save "output_$(echo "$topic" | md5sum | cut -c1-8).md"
done < topics.txt

# Different role combinations
for roles in "tech,security" "business,legal" "ux,product"; do
    paladin council --roles "$roles" --topic "Same topic" --save "perspective_${roles}.md"
done

Reviewing the Saved Transcript

# Save the transcript
paladin council --topic "Complex decision" --save transcript.md

# Feed it back for a follow-up discussion
paladin council --topic "Follow up on this discussion: $(cat transcript.md)"

Performance Tips

See Also

• CLI Usage Guide - Overview of all CLI commands
• Muster Command - Generate full Battalion configurations
• Conclave Pattern - Detailed council/conclave documentation
• Battalion Patterns - Understanding orchestration patterns
• Examples Directory - Sample implementations

Support

• Issues: Report bugs at https://github.com/DF3NDR/paladin-dev-env/issues
• Discussions: Ask questions in GitHub Discussions
• Documentation: Full docs at https://paladin-ai.dev

Council discussions are ephemeral and don't persist state. For production workflows with state management, use paladin run with configuration files.