Council: several models, one answer

Availability

What a council is

• Members. Three to five seats, one model per family, each answering from its own provider with the same question and context. The default roster is the first enabled model of each family your organization has.
• Adjudicator. A model that is never a member. It reads the answers as evidence, not as its own, compares positions, fact-checks and writes the synthesis. Platform default picks it for you.
• Fact-check with web search. The adjudicator looks up the load-bearing numbers and names each source as primary, reputable or weak. Without a web search provider, the council answers without fact-checks and says so.
• Nothing hidden. The raw answers stay one click away, and a member that fails is shown rather than dropped.

Start a council

1. Step 101

   Open the council

   Go to /council or choose Ask the council on the home page. The hero reads Don't ask one AI. Ask the council; the roster is on the side.
2. Step 202

   Set the roster

   Council roster lists the seats with a toggle and the credits per seat; the count reads N of 5 · min 3. Choose the Adjudicator (Platform default or a model) and leave Fact-check with web search on unless you want a faster, cheaper turn.
3. Step 303

   Read the estimate

   Estimated cost for this question shows the credits: N member answers + adjudication, reserved before the question is sent and settled on actual tokens. The composer chip repeats it: Council · N models, about N credits per question.
4. Step 404

   Ask

   Send the question as in any chat. With fewer than three seats on, the composer says A council needs at least 3 members and will not send.

While it deliberates

The turn shows Council deliberating with a timer and each member's state. Members answer in parallel; the adjudicator starts when all have answered, or after 60 seconds with whoever has. Read now opens a member's answer while the others are still writing. Adjudicator steps then run in order: Collect answers, Compare positions, Fact-check, Write the synthesis, with a Budget line showing credits reserved and settled so far.

Read the result

The header summarizes the turn: how many answered, who adjudicated, how many claims were fact-checked, the seconds it took and the credits it cost. Five tabs sit under it.

Reading the chips

Each conclusion carries the models behind it; gray means the model took the other side or was silent. Supported by A, B; not by C spells it out, and The adjudicator's own judgment marks a conclusion no member stated.

Source quality

Primary: official docs, standards, filings. Reputable: peer-reviewed, major press, maintained references. Weak: vendor blogs, forums, unsourced. A fact-check with no source found says so.

Degraded outcomes and retry

A council degrades visibly. The notes you may see on a turn:

• Member missing. {names} did not answer; the council continues with N members.
• Below quorum. Only N of M members answered, below the quorum of 3. The raw answers are shown without adjudication. There is no synthesis.
• Adjudicator failed. The adjudicator failed (reason). The raw answers are shown without a synthesis. Press Retry adjudication; the member answers are kept and only the adjudicator runs again. Too many retries in a row are rate-limited.
• No web search. No web search was available, so the council answered without fact-checks.

Follow-ups and the roster

A chat opened on the council stays a council: the stored mode wins when you reopen it, and every follow-up goes to the same roster and is adjudicated again. The roster is per chat: /council starts from the organization's default seats, and an existing council chat adopts the roster it was sent with. A council chat opened from the ordinary chat list or from the mobile app, without a roster of its own, falls back to the default seats.

Council skills

Council skills are attached once and inherited by every seat; switch a seat off under Seats to keep a skill out of that member's turns. Each skill shows its version and readiness (Ready, Setup required, Blocked), and Attach from library adds more up to the cap. Skills themselves are covered in the Skills guide.

Credits

A council turn is several model calls: one per member plus the adjudicator, each priced like an ordinary call on that model. The roster shows credits per seat, the estimate shows the total for the question, and the turn's header shows what it actually cost. Credits are reserved before the question is sent and settled on actual tokens, so a member that fails is not charged for an answer it did not give. See Credits and usage.

Good to know

• If no seat is available: the roster reads No council seat is available: your organization has no enabled model in any family; an admin enables models under Organization settings.
• If you want a cheaper turn: switch seats down to three and turn Fact-check with web search off; the estimate updates as you do.
• If you need a decision, not a survey: read Recommendation and What would change the answer first; the Disagree tab shows where the risk sits.
• If you automate it: a flow can run a council turn as a step; see the Flows guide.