Use the terminal UI

Council Console is the full-screen interactive terminal UI (TUI). On an interactive terminal it now opens by default when you run council with no arguments — browse panels and experts, chat, convene a debate, conclude, and export without remembering a single subcommand. Everything you can do from the classic CLI is reachable here, with live navigation and contextual help.

Launch the TUI

On an interactive terminal, just run:

council

A bare council with no subcommand launches Council Console. To launch it explicitly — for example from a script alias, or after you’ve opted bare invocations out — use the dedicated command:

council ui

council ui always launches the TUI, regardless of the auto-launch default. See council ui in the command reference.

Stay in the classic CLI

The TUI only takes over a bare, interactive invocation. Any of the following keeps you on the classic line-oriented CLI:

Escape hatch	Effect
Run any subcommand (council convene …, council ask …)	Subcommands never launch the TUI
council --no-tui	Per-invocation opt-out for a bare council
COUNCIL_NO_TUI=1	Environment opt-out for every bare council
Non-interactive stdout (piped, redirected, or no TTY)	Falls back to the classic CLI automatically
CI is set	Continuous-integration environments never launch the TUI

Because Council detects a non-interactive stream, piping or redirecting works the way you’d expect — no flag required:

council | cat            # non-TTY stdout → classic CLI
COUNCIL_NO_TUI=1 council # explicit opt-out → classic CLI

COUNCIL_TUI=1 still works

Before the TUI became the default, COUNCIL_TUI=1 was the opt-in to force it on. It still forces the TUI for a bare council, so existing setups keep working — but it’s now redundant with the default-on behavior.

Find your way around

Council Console is keyboard-driven. The left sidebar lists the main destinations (Home, Panels, Experts, Sessions, Chats, Settings); the footer always shows the keys available on the current screen.

Key	Action
↑ ↓ / j k	Move within a list
Enter	Select / confirm
Tab	Switch focus between the sidebar and the main pane
\	Show or hide the sidebar
Ctrl+K	Open the command palette (jump anywhere by name)
?	Open contextual help
Esc	Go back one screen — and quit from Home
q	Quit

Contextual help (?)

Press ? on any screen to open the help overlay. It lists the global keys above plus the shortcuts specific to where you are — for example, on a panel’s detail screen it shows c Chat, m Edit members, d Delete, and v Convene. Press ? again or Esc to close it. If you ever feel lost, ? is the fastest way to see what the current screen can do.

Command palette (Ctrl+K)

Press Ctrl+K to open the command palette, type to filter, and press Enter to jump straight to a destination or action.

A tour of the flows

Council Console covers the full Council workflow. Each area exposes its actions through the contextual ? help, so this is a map rather than a script.

Home dashboard

The landing screen summarizes your recent activity and offers quick actions: c convene, e new expert, p new panel, and , settings.

Panels

Browse and inspect your panels, then create or curate them in place:

• Create a panel and pick its members, or auto-compose one from a topic.
• From a panel’s detail screen: chat with the panel, edit members, delete, or convene a debate.

Experts

Browse experts and open one to see its definition and what it remembers:

• Create a generic or persona expert and edit it. For example, a persona for Pedro Fuentes (VP of Engineering) with the slug pedro-fuentes.
• Manage a persona’s documents and train it on them to build its memory.
• An expert’s memory — its synthesized profile and extracted highlights — is shown inline on the detail screen.

See Persona Experts and the Memory Model for the concepts behind this.

Chat

Open a streaming conversation with a single expert (1:1) or with a whole panel:

• In a panel chat, every expert responds by default. Address specific experts with @mention (for example @pedro-fuentes) to fan a message out to just them.
• Trigger a structured debate inline with @convene — Council Console jumps straight into the convene flow for that panel.
• Conversations persist, so you can resume them from the Chats list later.

The same directives work in the classic CLI — see In-Chat Directives.

Convene → debate → conclude

Starting from a panel, Council estimates the cost first:

1. A cost-confirmation modal shows the experts, rounds, and estimated premium requests — press y (or Enter) to run, or n to cancel.
2. The debate streams live, round by round. Press Esc to cancel mid-stream; the partial transcript is preserved.
3. From a session, conclude to synthesize the debate into a decision matrix.

Sessions & export

The Sessions list shows your past debates. Open one to read its transcript, then conclude (c) or export (x) it. The export overlay previews a sanitized render before writing a file and supports four formats:

• Markdown — readable transcript
• JSON (NDJSON) — one record per line, for tooling
• ADR — an Architecture Decision Record
• Share — a redacted, shareable summary

See Output Formats for details.

First-run onboarding

The very first time you open Council Console, a short onboarding step helps you pick a default model. Use ↑/↓ to choose and Enter to confirm, or Esc to skip and keep the default. Your choice is saved to config.yaml and applied to the running session immediately.

Settings

Open Settings (or press , from Home) to view and edit your configuration without leaving the app. Move with ↑/↓, edit a field with Enter, and save with Ctrl+S.

Telemetry & privacy

Council Console can keep a small local usage counter to help understand which screens and features get used. It is opt-in, off by default, local only, and content-free:

• No network. Nothing is ever sent anywhere — there is no endpoint.
• No content. It records only static counters such as screen.view:home and feature.used:export. It never records your prompts, responses, topics, panel or expert names, or file paths.

When enabled, the counters are written to a single local file at ~/.council/telemetry-counters.json.

council telemetry status     # show whether telemetry is enabled
council telemetry enable      # opt in
council telemetry disable     # opt out (the file simply stops being updated)
council telemetry explain      # print exactly what is and isn't recorded

To delete the collected counts, remove the file:

rm ~/.council/telemetry-counters.json

For the full privacy posture, see Security and Privacy and the council telemetry reference.

Accessibility & responsive layout

Council Console honors the same accessibility switches as the classic CLI and adapts to your terminal size:

• NO_COLOR disables ANSI colors; COUNCIL_ASCII=1 (or TERM=dumb) forces an ASCII-only charset.
• The layout is responsive — the sidebar collapses on narrow terminals, and below ~60 columns Council Console prompts you to widen the window.

See Environment Variables for the full list of rendering and launch switches.

Related

• council ui — launch the TUI explicitly
• Environment Variables — COUNCIL_NO_TUI, COUNCIL_TUI, and rendering switches
• Data Locations — where Council stores runtime data
• Security and Privacy — what stays local and what reaches your AI provider
• In-Chat Directives — @mention and @convene