The High Council MCP server

The High Council

A planning harness that runs one idea past several AI models from different labs, makes them argue about software engineering, architecture, specific features, roadmaps and philosophy, and stops at a checkable result at an estimated price, with a variable number of debate rounds, model seats and labs (except xAI) and variable token limits per response and model.

See it work right now - no keys, no setup, no cost:

npx the-high-council council demo

The demo takes one example request (a tool that renames holiday photos by date) through every stage: blind proposals, an anonymised debate in which one proposal is withdrawn and two are amended, a panel that splits in round 1 and signs off in round 2, and the handoff file. Every model reply in it is written in advance; what is real is the code that runs the stages around them.

Add it to Claude Code as an MCP server:

claude mcp add council -- npx -y the-high-council council --mcp

Runs as an MCP server (so an agent like Claude Code can drive it) or as a CLI. Bring your own API keys. Nothing is resold, nothing is hosted for you, and your keys go only to the providers you choose, never to us.

Run npx the-high-council council doctor to see which of your own keys are set, which shipped chains you can already run with them, and what each would cost - before spending anything.

On what this does and doesn't claim. This repo publishes the mechanism: the chains, the seat

rosters, the stage order. It does not claim to produce better plans than a single good model

would. That is an open question and we have not measured it. What it does, concretely, is make

disagreement between models visible and recorded instead of averaged away - you can read who

objected to what, who withdrew a proposal under argument, and who held their position.

Your first ten minutes

New to API keys, or to this? This path costs nothing until step 4, and step 4 tells you the price before anything is spent.

scripted replies. No key, no network, $0.

1. Watch one. npx the-high-council demo walks an example request through every stage with

your own idea, in plain words) and chains/my-first-chain.json, and runs a $0 mock pass so you can look inside a real run folder.

1. Make it yours. npx the-high-council init writes tasks/my-first-task.md (edit it into

"Start here" block names the chains that need one key only: a single OPENROUTERAPIKEY (one account at openrouter.ai that reaches many labs' models) is enough for a seven-lab panel. Put the key in a file called .env in the folder you run from, as OPENROUTERAPIKEY=..., and add .env to your .gitignore so it is never committed.

1. Find the least setup. npx the-high-council doctor lists what your keys can run. Its

it without:

1. Price it, then run it. Add --dry-run to see the worst-case price for your task, then run

npx the-high-council --task tasks/my-first-task.md --chain cheap-7-v2 --dry-run npx the-high-council --task tasks/my-first-task.md --chain cheap-7-v2

Every run stops before it would pass its spend cap ($7 unless you set --max-usd). A run stopped by the cap keeps what it paid for but has no plan yet, so pick a cap at or above the dry run's price. A panel that signs off early costs less than the worst case.

The plan lands in runs//deliverable.md; the argument behind it is in BOARD.md.

No key and no budget? A chain can run on models on your own machine through Ollama at $0, if your computer can run them. Everywhere below, council means npx the-high-council unless you installed it globally.

Words used here

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.