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Create and train a persona of a real person

A persona expert reasons like a specific person instead of a generic role. You create it, feed it that person’s documents, and Council distills a profile (communication style, decision patterns, biases, vocabulary) it uses to respond. For the full walkthrough see Model a Real Person as a Persona Expert.

Step 1: Create a trainable persona

Section titled “Step 1: Create a trainable persona”

Use the --persona flag — only persona experts can be trained on documents.

Terminal window
council expert create --persona \
  --slug pedro-fuentes \
  --name "Pedro Fuentes (VP of Engineering)" \
  --role "VP of Engineering" \
  --expertise "Past decisions and their outcomes, Written rationale in proposals and reviews" \
  --stance "Pragmatic, outcome-oriented: prefers reversible bets and clear measures of success." \
  --persona-description "VP of Engineering whose decisions I want to anticipate"
✓ Expert "pedro-fuentes" created at ~/Council/experts/pedro-fuentes.yaml
  Place documents about this person in ~/Council/experts/pedro-fuentes/docs

The --persona-description is the relationship — who this person is to you.

Step 2: Train from documents

Section titled “Step 2: Train from documents”

Pass each document with --file (repeatable). Council copies it into the persona’s docs folder, indexes it, and distills the profile. Choose material that shows how the person decides: decision logs, proposal reviews, meeting notes, strategy memos.

Terminal window
council expert train pedro-fuentes \
  --file ~/decision-log.md \
  --file ~/proposal-review-notes.md
Copying decision-log.md to expert docs...
Copying proposal-review-notes.md to expert docs...
Training "pedro-fuentes" from ~/Council/experts/pedro-fuentes/docs...
✓ Processed 2 document(s) (0 failed, 0 needs review, 0 removed, 149 total words); 0 already up to date.
✓ Persona profile updated.

Pull a document from the web with --url (its path must end in a supported extension like .md, .pdf, .docx):

Terminal window
council expert train pedro-fuentes --url https://example.com/strategy-memo.md

You can also drop files directly into ~/Council/experts/pedro-fuentes/docs/ and run council expert train pedro-fuentes with no flags.

Step 3: Verify the learned profile

Section titled “Step 3: Verify the learned profile”
Terminal window
council expert inspect pedro-fuentes

Look under Learned Profile (from training) for the communication style, decision patterns, biases, vocabulary, and epistemic stance Council distilled. If it’s empty, training didn’t run — confirm the expert was created with --persona and that documents are present.

Step 4: Consult the persona

Section titled “Step 4: Consult the persona”
Terminal window
council chat pedro-fuentes

Ask how the person would react to a proposal; the persona answers from its profile plus retrieved snippets of their documents.

Section titled “Related”