Resume a Debate

Time: ~3 minutes
Learning outcome: List saved debates, view transcripts, and continue deliberations with follow-up questions.

What you’ll learn

By the end of this tutorial, you will:

List all saved debate sessions
View a debate transcript without continuing it
Resume a debate with a follow-up question

Prerequisites

Completed Tutorial 1: Install and First Debate
At least one completed debate (from council convene)

What is a session?

Every council convene creates a session — a saved record of the panel, experts, and all debate turns. Sessions persist in Council’s local database (~/.council/council.db) so you can:

Review past deliberations
Continue debates with new questions
Export or share decisions made weeks or months ago

Step 1: List your sessions

See all saved debates:

council sessions

You’ll see output like:

Saved sessions:
  ✓ analytics-platform-3vk9j2 (completed)
    Topic: Should we build our own analytics platform or buy?
    Experts: 3 · Rounds: 4 · Last activity: 2 hours ago

  ✓ graphql-migration-8xm2k1 (completed)
    Topic: Should we migrate from REST to GraphQL?
    Experts: 4 · Rounds: 3 · Last activity: 1 day ago

Each session shows:

Status icon: ✓ (completed), ⏸ (interrupted), ⚠ (failed)
Panel identifier: the name you’ll use to resume or export
Topic: the original question
Metadata: expert count, rounds, timestamp

Step 2: View a transcript (read-only)

To replay a debate without continuing it:

council resume <panel-name>

Replace <panel-name> with the identifier from council sessions (e.g., analytics-platform-3vk9j2).

What happens:

Council streams the saved transcript to your terminal:

━━━ Round 1 ━━━

[Priya Mehta — CTO]
Building in-house gives us full control, but the cost is real...

[James Whitfield — CFO]
Three engineers at $180K fully loaded is $270K just for the build phase...

━━━ Synthesis ━━━
The panel converges on one risk: the 6-month data gap...

No LLM calls are made — this is a pure read from the database. Fast and offline-friendly.

Step 3: Resume with a follow-up question

To continue a debate with new input, use the --prompt flag:

council resume <panel-name> --prompt "What if our data volume is 10x larger than expected?"

What happens:

Council loads the saved panel and experts
A new debate round begins with your follow-up question
Experts build on their prior positions (if memory is enabled)
The session is updated with the new turns

Example output:

Resuming panel: analytics-platform-3vk9j2
Topic: Should we build our own analytics platform or buy?

━━━ Follow-up ━━━

[Priya Mehta — CTO]
At 10x scale, the vendor cost equation flips. Mixpanel charges
per event — we'd be looking at $30K/month, not $3K...

[James Whitfield — CFO]
True, but the build cost also scales. We'd need distributed
tracing, partitioning, and a dedicated data platform team...

Step 4: Resume the most recent debate (shortcut)

If you just want to continue your latest session without looking up the panel name:

council resume --latest --prompt "What about compliance requirements?"

The --latest flag skips name resolution and resumes the most recent panel automatically.

What you accomplished

Listed all saved debate sessions
Viewed a debate transcript in read-only mode
Continued a debate with a follow-up question
Learned the --latest shortcut for quick resumption

Next steps

Combine with export: After resuming, run council export <panel-name> to capture the full deliberation
Conclude a resumed debate: Use council conclude <panel-name> to synthesize the extended discussion
Explore memory: Read about Council’s memory system to understand how experts recall prior debates

Commands introduced

Command	Purpose
`council sessions`	List all saved debate sessions
`council resume <panel>`	View debate transcript (read-only)
`council resume <panel> --prompt`	Continue debate with follow-up question
`council resume --latest --prompt`	Resume most recent debate

Session management tips

Panel identifiers: Council auto-generates unique IDs (e.g., analytics-platform-3vk9j2). You can also use prefix matching — council resume analytics works if only one panel starts with “analytics”.
Interrupted debates: If you Ctrl+C during a debate, it’s saved with interrupted status and can be resumed.
Transcript formats: Use council resume <panel> --format json to get machine-readable NDJSON output instead of pretty-printed text.

What’s next?

You’ve completed the beginner tutorial ladder! You now know how to:

Install and run your first debate
Conclude and export decisions
Use built-in templates for specialized panels
Resume and continue saved debates

Continue learning:

How-To Guides: Task-oriented recipes for specific workflows
Reference: Complete command and configuration documentation
Explanation: Deep dives into Council’s architecture and design