council

PolyClaude Council — Multi-Perspective Analysis

PolyClaude spawns parallel cognitive perspectives to analyze questions, plans, and ideas from multiple angles, then synthesizes findings through structured dialectical analysis.

When to Use

The /polyclaude command is valuable when:

• Making a significant decision and wanting to stress-test it before committing
• Evaluating a plan or proposal from angles you might not think of alone
• Exploring a problem space before narrowing to a solution
• Wanting a "red team" analysis of an idea
• Needing to present a balanced assessment to stakeholders

The Council

Six cognitive perspectives are available. The User Advocate is always included (unless explicitly excluded); others are selected adaptively based on the question type:

Perspective	Lens	Always Asks
User Advocate (default)	Experience, empathy, accessibility	"How does this feel to encounter?"
Architect	Systems, structure, scalability	"What are the load-bearing assumptions?"
Skeptic	Risks, assumptions, failure modes	"What are we not seeing?"
Pragmatist	Simplicity, effort, trade-offs	"What's the simplest thing that works?"
Innovator	Alternatives, inversions, creativity	"What would the opposite look like?"
Temporal Analyst	Timelines, sequencing, second-order effects	"What does this look like in 6 months?"

How to Use

Basic

/polyclaude Should we rewrite the auth system or patch it?

Council Size

/polyclaude --quick Is this API design reasonable?          # 2 perspectives — fast sanity check
/polyclaude Should we use Redis or Postgres for sessions?   # 4 perspectives — default
/polyclaude --full What's our mobile strategy?              # 6 perspectives — comprehensive

Quality

/polyclaude --deep What architecture should we use?         # Opus agents — maximum depth
/polyclaude --full --deep Should we pivot to B2B?           # All 6 on Opus — thorough

Perspective Control

/polyclaude --include temporal,innovator Should we refactor the API?
/polyclaude --exclude pragmatist What if we open-sourced this?

Estimated Costs

Mode	Perspectives	Sonnet (default)	Opus (--deep)
--quick	2	~$0.15	~$0.75
(default)	4	~$0.30	~$1.50
--full	6	~$0.45	~$2.25

What You Get

A Council Report with:

1. Verdict — Bottom-line recommendation
2. Consensus Points — Where a strong majority agrees (highest confidence)
3. Key Tensions — Structured disagreements with resolution proposals
4. Blind Spots — What no perspective addressed
5. Confidence Map — Visual certainty/uncertainty across the analysis
6. Next Steps — Ordered, actionable items
7. Individual Perspectives — Full analyses in collapsible sections

Quick councils (2 perspectives) use a compact format: Verdict, Agreement/Disagreement, Blind Spots, Next Steps.

What Makes This Different

This is not "ask N AI agents the same question." It is structured dialectical analysis:

• Each perspective has a distinct cognitive methodology (not just a different prompt)
• Perspectives are instructed to challenge each other's likely arguments
• Synthesis identifies tensions (not just differences) and proposes resolutions
• Blind spot detection surfaces what nobody addressed
• Output is a decision document, not a discussion transcript
• Council composition adapts to your question type with named presets for size