Consilium

The consilium drains queued consilium-review orchestrator tasks one at a time, running the full 5-stage pipeline per task. On every successful task, the verdict + scribe summary mirror onto the seed and the sidekick-idea.reviewed event fires. On any stage failure, the task transitions to failed and the next queued task continues.

For what a sidekick seed is and how it gets captured, read Phase 0's sidekick-capture Feature. For the verdict gate's full algorithm, read REQ arbiter-gate-rules in this skill's source Feature.

When to Use

• The user typed /consilium or "run the consilium" or any other trigger phrase.
• The user wants to drain queued sidekick captures into reviewed verdicts.

Pre-flight

Before claiming any task — and before the Stage 3 nine-role panel — verify the cross-repo dependencies are present:

1. specscore present + capable (capability-gated detection). Per ../shared/cli-detection.md, consilium is a capability-gated skill: it needs the specscore consilium verdict subcommand, not merely the binary. Do not run a standalone command -v probe; detect by invoking specscore consilium verdict (e.g. with --help) and branch on the exit status:
   • exit 127 (binary not installed) → emit the install message (point the user at /specscore:install) and stop.
   • exit 8 (UnsupportedCommand — unsupported subcommand / too old) → the binary is present but predates consilium verdict; emit an upgrade message: "Phase 1 requires specscore with the consilium verdict subcommand (cross-repo dependency, tracked in spec/plans/sidekick-consilium-arbiter-companion.md). Upgrade and re-run."
   • any other non-zero → surface the CLI's error. This capability check MUST run here, before the Stage 3 panel — never after.
2. The orchestrator CLI is on PATH — the task lifecycle lives there (orchestrator task claim, orchestrator task update).
3. orchestrator task types — must include consilium-review. If absent, exit cleanly with the analogous message referencing the task-type companion plan.

If either cross-repo dependency is missing, do NOT claim any task and do NOT modify any file. Exit with the actionable error.

The pipeline (per claimed task)

Once pre-flight passes, claim all queued tasks and run this pipeline once per claim:

1. CLI gather       (deterministic, ~1K tokens of context)
2. Researcher       (one LLM call, produces briefing pack)
3. Expert panel     (N parallel LLM calls, one per active roster role)
4. CLI arbiter      (deterministic, applies the gate rules)
5. Scribe           (one LLM call, advisory only)

Each stage emits a transcript record (see "Transcript capture" below). Stage failures transition the task to failed with a typed reason; the next task continues.

Transcript capture (REQ pipeline-transcript-capture)

The skill MUST capture a structured transcript record at EACH stage's start and finalize at its end. This is NOT optional and NOT retrofittable — every stage's instructions below interleave transcript capture as integral to the stage, not a bolt-on.

Transcript structure (one entry per stage, plus per-role entries for the panel stage):

pipeline_transcript:
  - stage: gather
    started_at: <ISO-8601>
    ended_at: <ISO-8601>
    outcome: ok | failed
    error: <string, only when outcome: failed>
    commands: [<bash commands run>]
    output_summary: <stdout/stderr truncated to 4KB>
  - stage: researcher
    started_at: …
    ended_at: …
    outcome: ok | failed
    input: { seed_path: <path>, raw_context_ref: <path> }
    output: { briefing_pack: <markdown string or ref> }
  - stage: panel
    started_at: …
    ended_at: …
    outcome: ok | failed
    roles:                                # one entry per active roster role
      - role: <role-slug>
        input_includes_briefing: true
        tool_calls: [<tool-name>, ...]    # empty list if none
        vote: { verdict: …, confidence: …, cost: …, complexity: …, argument: … }
  - stage: arbiter
    started_at: …
    ended_at: …
    outcome: ok | failed
    input: { votes_path: <path>, roster_path: <path>, gate_path: <path>, seed_path: <path> }
    output: { verdict: …, rule_trace: […], excluded_votes: […], denominators: {...} }
  - stage: scribe
    started_at: …
    ended_at: …
    outcome: ok | failed
    input: { verdict: …, votes: […], briefing_ref: <path> }
    output: { summary_paragraph: <≤500 chars> }

The transcript is written to the orchestrator task as pipeline_transcript before the task transitions to complete. This is what makes the transcript-shape ACs (pipeline-runs-five-stages-in-order, every-expert-receives-briefing-and-may-research-deeper, panel-fans-out-in-parallel, pipeline-transcript-payload-shape) observable. If the transcript is missing or malformed, the task MUST transition to failed with reason malformed-transcript — even if the verdict itself is otherwise valid.

Stage 1: CLI gather (deterministic)

Transcript: start a record with stage: gather, started_at: <now>.

Run these commands in order (capture stdout + stderr; truncate the summary to 4KB):

# 1. Related features
specscore feature list --related "$SEED_SLUG" 2>&1 | head -50

# 2. Code-to-spec refs for captured_during
specscore code refs "$CAPTURED_DURING" 2>&1 | head -50

# 3. Recent git activity in relevant paths
git log --oneline --since="30 days ago" -- "$CAPTURED_DURING" 2>&1 | head -20

# 4. Prior captures within the dedupe window (30 days)
ls -t spec/ideas/seeds/ 2>/dev/null | head -10

Assemble the outputs into a single context bundle file at .specscore/consilium/<task-id>/raw-context.md. This file is the researcher's primary input.

Transcript: finalize with ended_at: <now>, outcome: ok, commands: […], output_summary: <truncated combined output>. On any command failure, set outcome: failed, error: <stderr first line> and transition the task to failed with reason gather-failed.

Stage 2: Researcher (one LLM call)

Transcript: start a record with stage: researcher, started_at: <now>.

Dispatch one Agent tool call with:

• subagent_type: general-purpose
• The seed file's full content + the raw context bundle from Stage 1
• The researcher prompt body from skills/consilium/roles/researcher.md (read it and include verbatim as the agent's instruction prompt)

Capture the agent's response. Write it to .specscore/consilium/<task-id>/briefing.md.

Validate the briefing:

• Must contain the four ## sections per the researcher's contract (Related artifacts, Code references, Recent git activity, Prior captures within dedupe window).
• Total length ≤ 1500 tokens (use wc -c and divide by ~4 for a quick approximation).

If validation fails, retry the Agent call ONCE with the same prompt. If it fails again, transition the task to failed with reason researcher-malformed.

Transcript: finalize with ended_at: <now>, outcome: ok, input: {seed_path, raw_context_ref}, output: {briefing_pack: <file ref or inline ≤2KB>}.

Stage 3: Expert panel (N parallel LLM calls)

Transcript: start a record with stage: panel, started_at: <now>.

Load the active roster

# Check for project-level overrides in specscore.yaml
ROSTER=$(specscore consilium roster --resolve)
# Output is YAML: a list of {name, group, path} per active role

If specscore.yaml has no consilium.roster block, --resolve returns the 9-role default. Otherwise, defaults + customs - excludes per REQ roster-exclude-and-custom.

Read all role files

For each role in the active roster, read its markdown file. Extract the ## Role Prompt section's content as the agent's prompt for that role.

Dispatch all role agents in parallel

This is the critical step for REQ parallel-fan-out. Use a single message containing N Agent tool calls so all role agents run concurrently:

Single message with N parallel Agent invocations:
  Agent (subagent_type: general-purpose, description: "engineer vote", prompt: <engineer role prompt + seed + briefing>)
  Agent (subagent_type: general-purpose, description: "architect vote", prompt: <architect role prompt + seed + briefing>)
  … (one per active role)

Each agent receives:

• The seed file's full content
• The briefing pack from Stage 2
• The role's prompt body

Each agent returns one YAML vote per REQ vote-schema.

Per-role transcript entry: as each agent returns, capture:

- role: <role-slug>
  input_includes_briefing: true       # always true; assert this as a discipline check
  tool_calls: [<list of tools the agent invoked beyond the briefing>]
  vote: <parsed YAML vote>

Validate each vote against REQ vote-schema (5 required fields, enum values valid, argument ≤ 280 chars). Any malformed vote transitions the task to failed with reason malformed-vote. Do NOT discard a single malformed vote and continue — zero tolerance per REQ vote-schema.

Transcript: finalize the panel stage record with ended_at: <now>, outcome: ok, roles: [<per-role entries>].

Stage 4: CLI arbiter (deterministic)

Transcript: start a record with stage: arbiter, started_at: <now>.

Write the votes, roster snapshot, and active gate config to temporary YAML files:

mkdir -p .specscore/consilium/<task-id>
echo "$VOTES_YAML" > .specscore/consilium/<task-id>/votes.yaml
echo "$ROSTER_YAML" > .specscore/consilium/<task-id>/roster.yaml
specscore consilium config --print-gate > .specscore/consilium/<task-id>/gate.yaml

Invoke the arbiter:

specscore consilium verdict \
  --votes .specscore/consilium/<task-id>/votes.yaml \
  --roster .specscore/consilium/<task-id>/roster.yaml \
  --gate .specscore/consilium/<task-id>/gate.yaml \
  --seed "$SEED_PATH" \
  > .specscore/consilium/<task-id>/verdict.yaml

The arbiter's stdout YAML contains: verdict, rule_trace, excluded_votes, denominators.

On non-zero exit (validation failure: malformed vote, invalid roster, file not found), transition the task to failed with reason from the arbiter's stderr.

Transcript: finalize with ended_at: <now>, outcome: ok, input: {<paths>}, output: <parsed verdict YAML>.

Stage 5: Scribe (one LLM call, advisory only)

Transcript: start a record with stage: scribe, started_at: <now>.

Dispatch one Agent tool call with:

• subagent_type: general-purpose
• The seed + the votes (all of them) + the verdict + the rule trace
• The scribe prompt from skills/consilium/roles/scribe.md (read verbatim)

Capture the agent's response. Ignore any verdict: field the scribe emits — the arbiter has already set the verdict per REQ scribe-cannot-change-verdict. Only the prose paragraph is consumed.

Validate the prose:

• Length ≤ 500 characters.
• No markdown headers (no lines starting with #).
• No bullet lists (no lines starting with - or * ).
• No code blocks (no triple-backticks).

If validation fails, retry ONCE. If it fails again, transition to failed with reason scribe-malformed.

Transcript: finalize with ended_at: <now>, outcome: ok, input: {verdict, votes_ref, briefing_ref}, output: {summary_paragraph: <prose>}.

Write-back (post-pipeline, before task transitions to complete)

Update the task payload

Per REQ verdict-source-of-truth-in-task, the task carries the full structured payload:

orchestrator task update <task-id> \
  --field roster_snapshot=@.specscore/consilium/<task-id>/roster.yaml \
  --field votes=@.specscore/consilium/<task-id>/votes.yaml \
  --field briefing_pack=@.specscore/consilium/<task-id>/briefing.md \
  --field arbiter_output=@.specscore/consilium/<task-id>/verdict.yaml \
  --field pipeline_transcript=@.specscore/consilium/<task-id>/transcript.yaml \
  --field tokens_total=<computed_total> \
  --field scribe_summary=<scribe paragraph>

Mirror the scribe summary to the seed

Per REQ verdict-summary-in-seed, append a ## Consilium Verdict section to the seed file. Placement: immediately before the SpecScore footer line if present, else end-of-file. If a ## Consilium Verdict section already exists (re-enqueue case), replace in place (do NOT duplicate).

Section format:

## Consilium Verdict

**Verdict:** <verdict-enum> (<YYYY-MM-DD>)

Full payload: orchestrator task <task-id>.

<scribe prose paragraph>

Transition the task to complete

orchestrator task update <task-id> --status complete

Emit sidekick-idea.reviewed

Per REQ event-reviewed-emitted, emit the event with the envelope+payload from REQ:

# If specscore event emit is available, prefer it
if specscore event emit --help &>/dev/null 2>&1; then
  specscore event emit sidekick-idea.reviewed <event-yaml>
else
  # Fallback: append JSONL directly
  jq -c -n \
    --arg event "sidekick-idea.reviewed" \
    --arg uuid "$(uuidgen)" \
    --arg ts "$(date -u +%FT%TZ)" \
    --arg slug "$SEED_SLUG" \
    --arg verdict "$VERDICT" \
    '{event: $event, version: 1, uuid: $uuid, timestamp: $ts, …, payload: {slug: $slug, verdict: $verdict, …}}' \
    >> .specscore/events.jsonl
fi

The full envelope+payload structure is in skills/shared/events.md under the sidekick-idea.reviewed section.

Output to the operator

Print one line per completed task:

Reviewed: <seed-slug> → <verdict> (orchestrator task <task-id>)

After all queued tasks are processed, print a summary:

Consilium drained: <N> reviews complete, <M> failed, <K> awaiting human review.

Red Flags

These patterns indicate misuse and should be refused or refactored:

• Per-slug invocation (/consilium <slug>) — not supported in Phase 1; reject with the error in REQ drain-all-queued.
• --limit or any other invocation-shape variant — same.
• Skipping the transcript capture — every stage MUST record its transcript entry; missing entries are a contract violation.
• Continuing the pipeline past a malformed vote — zero tolerance per REQ vote-schema.
• Editing the verdict based on the scribe's output — by contract the scribe cannot change the verdict.
• Reviewing a seed whose content_hash doesn't match the task's stored hash — transition to failed with reason seed-mutated per REQ seed-mutation-detection.

References

• shared/sidekick-capture.md — the directive Phase 0 ships; explains what sidekick seeds are.
• shared/events.md — event envelope, including sidekick-idea.reviewed.
• roles/ — the 11 default role files (researcher + scribe + 9 panel roles).
• references/role-file-contract.md — the markdown contract every role file follows.
• references/consilium-config-example.md — the specscore.yaml consilium: block schema.
• Feature: sidekick-consilium — the spec this skill implements.
• spec/plans/sidekick-consilium-arbiter-companion.md — cross-repo arbiter dependency.
• spec/plans/sidekick-consilium-task-companion.md — cross-repo task type dependency.