Customize defaults

Council stores its configuration in ~/Council/config.yaml. You can view and modify settings via the council config commands.

View current configuration

council config show

This displays all settings with their current values and where each value comes from (default, config file, or environment variable).

View config file location

council config path

Change a default

council config set defaults.model gpt-4.1
council config set defaults.maxRounds 6
council config set defaults.maxExperts 5
council config set defaults.engine copilot

Edit config directly

Open the config file in your editor for more complex changes:

council config edit

This opens ~/Council/config.yaml in $EDITOR (or $VISUAL).

Available settings

Common configuration keys:

defaults.model — default model (e.g., claude-sonnet-4.5, gpt-4.1)
defaults.engine — default engine (copilot or mock)
defaults.maxRounds — max debate rounds (default: 4)
defaults.maxExperts — max auto-composed experts (default: 3, range: 2–8)
defaults.maxWordsPerResponse — soft word budget per expert response (default: 250); a nudge, not a hard cap. In structured debates it anchors the opening phase and the other phases scale from it (synthesis higher; cross-examination and rebuttal lower); freeform debates apply it uniformly.
documents.aiExtraction — enable AI-based document extraction (bool)
documents.maxFileSizeMB — max file size for document indexing
conclude.maxTranscriptChars — character limit for conclusion synthesis

See the Configuration Reference for the complete list.

Override per-command

You can override any default on individual commands:

council convene "Question" --model gpt-4.1 --max-rounds 6 --max-experts 4

Run offline with mock engine — use the mock engine for testing