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Council

Run offline with the mock engine

Council includes a deterministic mock engine for testing, demos, and offline use.

Use the mock engine

Section titled “Use the mock engine”
Terminal window
council convene "Test topic" --template code-review --engine mock

Mock responses are clearly labeled with !! [MOCK ENGINE] banners so you never confuse them with real output.

When to use

Section titled “When to use”

The mock engine is useful for:

  • Testing panel configurations before running live
  • CI/CD pipelines — deterministic output for tests
  • Demos and screenshots — predictable output
  • Working without network access

Available engines

Section titled “Available engines”

Today, Council supports two engines:

  • copilot (default) — GitHub Copilot SDK (requires GitHub Copilot subscription)
  • mock — deterministic responses for testing

Override the default engine

Section titled “Override the default engine”

Set your default engine in config:

Terminal window
council config set defaults.engine copilot

Or override per-command:

Terminal window
council convene "Question" --template code-review --engine mock
Section titled “Related”