council-enginelisted

# Council Engine Orchestrates a deliberation: independent seats reason in parallel, peer-review each other anonymously, and a chairman synthesizes without smoothing dissent. The full protocol contract (verbatim guardrail text, output headings, rationale) lives in `references/protocol.md`. Topology details live in `references/topologies.md`. Read both before your first run. ## Inputs You need two things, plus one optional flag: 1. **A roster file** — `councils/<name>.md` (or an explicit path the caller provides, e.g. a test fixture). 2. **The framed input** — the question, decision, or artifact under deliberation, exactly as the caller framed it. 3. **Mode escalation (optional)** — quick is the default; a caller passing the user's `--full` flag escalates to full (see Step 3). ## Step 1: Resolve the roster Read the roster file's YAML frontmatter: | Key | Meaning | |---|---| | `topology` | `parallel` or `staged` — how the deliberation runs | | `seats` | ordered list of seat IDs participating in a full run | | `quick_seats` | non-empty subset of `seats` that runs in quick mode (see Step 3) | | `model_overrides` | optional map of `seat_id → tier` | The shape of `seats` depends on topology: a flat list of seat IDs for `parallel`; an ordered list of **stage groups** (a list of lists) for `staged` (see `references/topologies.md` for both shapes). Validate the roster before loading anything: - `seats` must be non-empty — an empty list → STOP: `Roster '<name>' has n