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