Executive Council · how it works

The protocol, start to finish.

One pass where every seat writes its own position, one round of targeted attacks, one revision, one synthesis, and an independent audit. No loops, no filler, and nothing hidden from you at the end.

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Positions Duels Revision Synthesis Audit
The protocol

Five stages, in this order, every run.

  • 01Seats form their positionsPositions
  • 02Targeted duelsDuels
  • 03RevisionRevision
  • 04Chairman synthesisSynthesis
  • 05Independent auditAudit

One first pass, one critique round, one revision round, one synthesis, one audit. A normal run has no loop in it.

STAGE 01ALL FIVE AT ONCE

Seats form their positions

Opportunity
Skeptic
Systems Thinker
Operator
First Principles

All five seats read your decision at the same time and write their own position. None of them can see the others yet, so nobody starts by agreeing with anybody. If a seat needs evidence to make its case, it can call for it mid-thought rather than guessing.

STAGE 02TARGETED, NOT ALL AGAINST ALL

Duels, aimed at one opponent

Opportunity Skeptic
Systems Thinker Operator
First Principles goes after the whole emerging consensus, every other active seat at once.

Each seat attacks one assigned opponent instead of the whole room. That is deliberate. It keeps a seat from being swayed by an emerging majority, which is exactly how a group of models talks itself into a bad answer. Each critique names the strongest argument it found, the weakest assumption it can see, and the variable nobody accounted for.

STAGE 03EACH SEAT REWRITES ITS OWN

Revision, with three honest options

Concede the point Strengthen the case Hold, and answer the objection
First positionRaise 20 percent. The upside is clear and the market can carry it.
after the duel
Revised positionRaise for new customers only, and hold until the churn read is in. The objection about renewals is fair and I am conceding it.

Every seat rewrites its own position after reading what was aimed at it. It can concede a point that was fairly challenged, strengthen its case with better support, or hold the line and answer the objection head on. The Chairman only ever sees these revised positions, never the first drafts.

STAGE 04ONE PASS

The Chairman writes one call

five revised positionsone recommendation

The Chairman reads every revised position and every critique, resolves the contradictions, prioritises the strongest evidence, and writes a single recommendation. It is told in as many words not to smooth over real disagreement, because a comfortable summary is worth nothing to you.

STAGE 05SEPARATE FROM THE COUNCIL

An independent audit of the answer

Claims the evidence does not support
Overconfidence in the recommendation
Reasoning that does not hold up

A separate auditor checks the recommendation against the evidence the run actually gathered, not against its own prior opinions. It reports what it found in plain words. It is a diagnostic, not a hard gate: it has missed things before, and you should read it as one more pair of eyes rather than a stamp of approval.

Then the dissent log is pulled out.

Straight from the critiques the seats already wrote, with no extra model call and no pass through the Chairman. That is why the objections reach you in the seat's own words.

Push back and it runs again.

Challenge the answer and each seat first says whether it has enough to work with or asks one targeted question. The Chairman merges those into at most three, and then the whole protocol runs again with your clarifications. It is a second deliberation, not a chat reply.

Setup

Five minutes, then it is yours.

Executive Council runs on your own model access key, through OpenRouter. You set the ceiling, you own the account, and you can pull the key back out whenever you like.

Create a free OpenRouter account

Just an email, at openrouter.ai. Nothing to install and no card at this step.

Add a little credit

It sits in your own account and stays your money. How much you put in is entirely up to you.

Set a spending limit YOUR SAFETY NET

This is your hard ceiling. Nothing can ever go past it, no matter what we do or what goes wrong at our end.

Create your API key

One click on the keys page at openrouter.ai/settings/keys, then copy it.

Paste it into Executive Council

Once. We encrypt it, never show it back to your browser, and you can delete it in one click. After that you are running the real council.

Is this safe? Yes, here is why.

You set the ceiling

The spending limit lives on your OpenRouter account, not ours. Nothing can go past it.

Turn it off in one click

Delete the key from Executive Council, or revoke it at the provider. Either one stops everything.

Start small

A full deliberation costs very little. You do not need to commit anything meaningful to find out if it is useful.

We can never touch your money

We only ever spend what your key allows, and the bill goes straight from the provider to you.

Want to see it before you set any of this up?

Three real questions on us: one opening question, one follow-up, and one challenge to the answer you get. No account and no key of your own. Same five seats, same protocol.

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This is AI, and we say so. Every seat, the synthesis, and the audit are AI generated. Read the deliberation and the dissent, then apply your own judgement before you act on it. How Executive Council handles your data