Counsel — Multi-LLM Debate Panel

Counsel is the panel for running structured debates between multiple LLMs on a single topic, then synthesizing the result. It’s modeled after a deliberative council: each participant gets a role (Expert, Skeptic, Devil’s Advocate, Pragmatist, etc.), responses are recorded round-by-round, and a moderator can synthesize a final answer.

This page documents the desktop panel. Counsel is currently desktop-only; mobile / watch / IDE plugins don’t expose it.

How a session works

1. Setup. You add 2-N participants — each is a (provider, model, role, optional persona) tuple. Pick one as the moderator.
2. Topic. Enter a free-form question or proposition for the council to debate.
3. Round 1. Click Run Round — every non-moderator participant generates a response in parallel. Responses appear in the round’s card with the participant’s role badge color-coded.
4. (Optional) Inject a message. Type into the inject box and the next round will include your interjection as a system message — useful for redirecting a stuck debate or asking a clarifying question.
5. (Optional) Vote. Each response has +/- buttons. Votes don’t change the debate flow; they’re a UI affordance for highlighting which response best moved the discussion forward.
6. (Optional) Update participants between rounds. Swap a participant’s provider/model without losing prior rounds — useful for “what would Claude say if GPT-4 had been here for the first round?”
7. Run more rounds as needed — typically 2-4 produce useful divergence.
8. Synthesize. The moderator reads all rounds and writes a synthesis — the panel’s final answer.

Session storage

Sessions live in ~/.vibeui/counsel-sessions.json as a JSON array. Each session has:

• id — UUID
• topic — the debate prompt
• participants — provider/model/role list
• rounds — array of {round_number, responses[], user_interjection?}
• moderator_index — which participant synthesizes
• status — Idle / Deliberating / Synthesized
• synthesis — final answer (only after synthesize)

The file is plain JSON — the topic, responses, and synthesis are stored verbatim. It’s not encrypted. If you debate sensitive topics, treat the file as the same trust level as a Notes or Docs file on disk.

Roles

Roles are visual + persona affordances; they’re prepended to the participant’s prompt as “You are the Skeptic — your job is to find weaknesses in arguments.” Role names and their suggested behavior:

You can mix roles freely — a 4-participant session with Expert / Skeptic / Creative / Pragmatist tends to produce the most divergent debates. Same provider in different roles is fine; it’s the role prompt that drives behavior, not the model.

Inject + vote — when to use

Inject is the user’s voice in the debate. The text becomes a system message visible to every participant in the next round. Good prompts:

• “Wait — round 2 missed the cost dimension. Address it.”
• “Let’s narrow scope to read-heavy workloads only.”
• “The Skeptic’s last objection is the strongest — others, respond directly.”

Vote is a soft signal. Up-votes don’t change which participants get called next round; they’re a way to mark which responses you’ll quote in the eventual synthesis prompt. The vote count appears on each response card; the moderator’s synthesize prompt sees the vote totals and is biased toward higher-voted responses.

/health declaration

features.counsel:

{
  "available": true,
  "transport": "tauri-desktop",
  "requires": "providers.configured_count >= 2 (for diverse debate)",
  "store_path": "~/.vibeui/counsel-sessions.json"
}

available follows the providers count: with 0 providers configured, the panel still renders but every participant card shows “Provider not configured”. With 1 provider you can run a session but every participant uses the same model — fine for testing, useless for actual debate. The recommended floor is 2+ different providers.

Observability

Backend operations emit structured tracing events under vibecody::counsel:

RUST_LOG=vibecody::counsel=info vibecli serve

Events:

INFO vibecody::counsel: counsel.session.create
  session_id=01HXYZ... participant_count=4 moderator_idx=0 providers=["claude", "openai", "gemini", "ollama"]

INFO vibecody::counsel: counsel.round.start
  session_id=01HXYZ... round=2 participant_count=4

INFO vibecody::counsel: counsel.round.complete
  session_id=01HXYZ... round=2 response_count=4 elapsed_ms=14820

INFO vibecody::counsel: counsel.session.delete
  session_id=01HXYZ... remaining=11

Topic, persona, response, and synthesis text are NEVER logged — only counts, ids, and timing. Operator dashboards aggregate these to spot stuck sessions (rounds taking >60s) and provider failures (round_complete without all responses).

Accessibility

• Session list items use role="button" tabIndex={0} AND respond to Enter / Space — the previous implementation had role="button" without an onKeyDown, which announced as a button to AT but didn’t activate.
• Verbose aria-label on session list rows: “Open session: — N rounds, M participants".
• Delete buttons gain an aria-label carrying the topic.
• Errors render with role="alert" aria-live="assertive" so they’re announced immediately.
• Participant cards use real <input type="checkbox"> for selection — no fake-checkbox role workaround needed.

Cross-client behaviour

Sessions are stored on the daemon machine only; no cross-device sync today. If you start a session on the desktop and want to view it from a phone later, that’s a future feature.

Troubleshooting

“Round failed: provider not configured”

One or more participants reference a provider with no API key. Open Settings → Providers and add the missing key, OR edit the participant’s provider via the dropdown to a configured one. The error surfaces inline with role="alert" so AT users hear it.

“Synthesis is just one participant’s answer copy-pasted”

The moderator was a small / unaligned model. Try setting the moderator to your strongest model (Claude Sonnet, GPT-4o, etc.) — synthesis is a hard task and benefits from a capable summarizer.

“Round 3 is identical to round 2”

The participants converged. This is a real outcome; the debate is over. Synthesize and start a new session with sharper roles (more contrarian Devil’s Advocate, more skeptical Skeptic) if you want continued divergence.

“Sessions disappeared after restart”

~/.vibeui/counsel-sessions.json was deleted or corrupted. Sessions aren’t backed up to the daemon — if the file goes, the sessions go. Consider a periodic backup to your dotfiles repo.

Related

• Source: vibeui/src/components/CounselPanel.tsx (~545 LOC) · backend in vibeui/src-tauri/src/commands.rs (counsel_create_session, counsel_run_round, counsel_synthesize, counsel_delete_session, counsel_inject_message, counsel_vote, counsel_update_participant)
• Counsel runtime: vibecli/vibecli-cli/src/counsel.rs — session model + add_round
• Arena Mode: docs/arena — for blind 1-vs-1 comparisons (different use case)
• SuperBrain: for parallel multi-provider runs with judge-as-aggregator (different use case)