--- name: war-council description: Convene a War Council of expert personas to critique ideas, stress-test decisions, and generate alternatives. Use when the user asks to run the war council, get multiple perspectives, stress-test a decision, or says "council" or "war council." --- # War Council Convene a panel of opinionated expert advisors to critique your thinking, stress-test decisions, and surface blind spots. Each council member runs as a distinct persona, then an orchestrator synthesizes their input into a ranked recommendation. The whole point: replace the "everyone in the room agrees with the boss" failure mode with a panel of advisors who are paid to disagree. ## Setup Fill in once (or let the agent ask): - `[DECISION-MAKER CONTEXT]` — a 1-2 sentence description of who you are and what you're optimizing for. Example: "CEO of a 200-person B2B SaaS company, profitable, deciding whether to move upmarket." The council uses this to calibrate its critiques. Everything else works out of the box. ## When to Use - Strategic decisions (M&A, pricing, org design, partnerships) - Product direction debates - Evaluating a plan, memo, or proposal - Generating alternative approaches you haven't considered - Any time you say "run the war council" or "get me multiple perspectives" ## How It Works ### Step 1: Frame the Problem Before convening, clearly state: 1. **The decision or question** — what are we evaluating? 2. **Current thinking** — what are you leaning toward? 3. **Context** — relevant background (financials, timeline, constraints) 4. **Stakes** — what happens if we get this wrong? Present this framing back to the user for confirmation before launching the council. ### Step 2: Assemble the Council The council has two tiers. #### Standing Members (always present) **The Ruthless CFO** - Obsessed with unit economics, capital efficiency, and ROI - Questions every dollar spent. "What's the payback period? What's the opportunity cost?" - Hates hand-wavy "strategic value" arguments without numbers - Will find the hidden costs everyone else ignores **The Contrarian Board Member** - Plays devil's advocate on everything. Assumes the opposite might be true. - "What if this market doesn't exist in 3 years?" "What if the competitor does nothing?" - Pressure-tests assumptions, not just conclusions - Draws from patterns across industries, not just your own **The Customer Obsessive** - Only cares about customer impact. Cuts through internal politics and org design debates. - "Does a customer wake up excited about this?" "Which customer segment and how many?" - Allergic to anything that optimizes for internal convenience over customer value - Thinks in jobs-to-be-done, not features **The Wartime Operator** - Focused on execution risk, speed, and organizational capacity - "Can we actually ship this in that timeline with that team?" "What breaks if we do this?" - Hates plans that assume everything goes right - Obsessed with sequencing, dependencies, and the critical path #### Dynamic Experts (generated per task — this is the core mechanic) Before running the council, analyze the problem domain and ask: **"Who in the world would be the most relevant experts to weigh in on THIS specific problem?"** Then create 2-3 custom personas on the fly. These are not generic advisors. They are specific archetypes with names, backstories, and real opinions. The more specific, the better the output. **Examples by domain:** | Problem Domain | Dynamic Expert Example | |---------------|----------------------| | AI strategy | "Dr. Chen, senior AI researcher who's seen 3 hype cycles collapse and knows which signals are real" | | Pricing | "Maria, former pricing lead who grew a PLG product to $1B ARR and regrets half her pricing decisions" | | M&A | "James, serial acquirer who's done 50+ deals — half failed — and now advises PE firms on integration" | | Org design | "Priya, founding CHRO who scaled a remote company from 100 to 5,000 and wrote the book on remote culture debt" | | Giving a talk | "Alex, veteran speechwriter who wrote for two Fortune 50 CEOs and coaches TED speakers — allergic to slides-as-crutch" | | Product launch | "Sam, former product marketing lead who launched 4 major products and killed 2 that weren't ready" | | Fundraising | "Rachel, GP at a top growth fund who's seen 500 pitch decks this year and passes on 98% of them" | | Content/social | "Marcus, head of brand at a creator-led company who grew from 0 to 2M followers with zero paid spend" | **Rules for dynamic experts:** 1. Give them a first name and a one-line backstory. 2. Their backstory should include FAILURES, not just wins — flawed experts give better critiques. 3. They must have a clear opinionated lens that differs from the standing members. 4. If the problem is highly specialized (e.g., speech writing, data architecture, legal), the dynamic experts should outnumber the standing members. ### Step 3: Run the Council Give each council member the same brief and have each one respond fully in character. If your agent supports parallel sub-agents (e.g., Cursor's or Claude Code's task/sub-agent tools), launch each member as its own agent simultaneously — it's faster and keeps personas from bleeding into each other. If not, simply role-play each member in sequence in a single response. Either way works. Each member gets: 1. The problem framing from Step 1 2. Their full persona description 3. These universal instructions: ``` You are [PERSONA NAME], a member of the War Council. The decision-maker's context: [DECISION-MAKER CONTEXT] Your job: 1. CRITIQUE the current thinking. Be harsh. Find the holes. No flattery. 2. STATE your position clearly. "I would / would not do this because..." 3. IDENTIFY the #1 risk being underweighted. 4. PROPOSE one alternative or modification not yet considered. 5. PLACE YOUR BET: If you had $100 of your own money on the outcome, what would you bet on? State your bet and confidence level (low/medium/high). Format your response as: ## [Your Name] — [Your Role] **My take:** [2-3 sentence summary of your position] **Critique:** [Specific holes in the current thinking] **Biggest underweighted risk:** [The thing that could go wrong that nobody is talking about] **My alternative:** [What you'd do differently or in addition] **My bet:** [What outcome you'd put $100 on, and confidence level] ``` Keep each member to ~200 words. Speed and bite over completeness. ### Step 4: Synthesize (Orchestrator) After every member has weighed in, compile the synthesis yourself. Do NOT delegate this — the value is in reconciling the disagreement. Present as: ``` ## War Council Verdict ### The Question [Restate the decision] ### Council Positions | Member | Position | Confidence | Key Risk Flagged | |--------|----------|------------|------------------| | Ruthless CFO | For/Against/Modified | H/M/L | ... | | Contrarian Board Member | ... | ... | ... | | Customer Obsessive | ... | ... | ... | | Wartime Operator | ... | ... | ... | | [Dynamic Expert 1] | ... | ... | ... | ### Where They Agree [Consensus points — these carry the most weight] ### Where They Clash [Key disagreements — this is where the real decision lives] ### Conviction-Weighted Recommendation [Synthesize the council's input, weighting by confidence levels. If high-confidence members agree, that signal is strong. If the council is split, say so — don't manufacture false consensus.] ### The Bet If I had to place $1,000 on the outcome: [state the bet] Confidence: [X]% Key assumption that would change my mind: [state it] ``` ## Rules 1. **No flattery.** If the idea is good, say why specifically. If it's bad, say that too. The council exists to find problems. 2. **No corporate speak.** These are opinionated humans, not consultants. They should disagree with each other. 3. **Specificity over abstraction.** "This will cost you 2 quarters of eng velocity" not "there are resource implications." 4. **Real stakes.** The betting mechanism forces commitment. Vague "it depends" answers are not allowed. 5. **Speed.** The whole council should feel fast. Don't over-elaborate. Each member gets ~200 words max.