Build a Custom Panel

Time: ~7 minutes
Learning outcome: Create a custom panel template, configure its experts and debate parameters, and convene it by name.

What you’ll learn

By the end of this tutorial, you will:

• Create a custom panel with council panel create
• Configure panel members (custom experts + generic fallbacks)
• Set panel-level debate parameters (mode, rounds)
• Convene your panel template by name
• Manage panel templates in your library

Prerequisites

• Completed Tutorial 5: Create a Custom Expert
• At least one custom expert in your library (or follow Step 1 to create one)

Panel templates vs. sessions

• Panel template: A reusable YAML definition saved in ~/.council/data/panels/<name>.yaml with your chosen experts and settings
• Session: A specific debate run created each time you convene the panel (listed in council sessions)

One panel template → many sessions over time.

What is a custom panel?

Auto-composition (the default when you run council convene <topic>) is great for one-off questions, but some scenarios benefit from a pre-defined panel:

• Recurring decisions: Architecture reviews, vendor selection, incident post-mortems
• Fixed perspectives: Security + compliance + engineering every time
• Consistent format: Same debate mode, round count, and synthesis style

Custom panels capture this configuration once and make it trivial to reuse.

Step 1: Create a custom panel

Run the interactive wizard:

council panel create

You’ll be prompted for:

1. Panel name: A unique identifier (lowercase, hyphens, starts with a letter). Example: security-review
2. Description: Human-readable purpose. Example: Security, compliance, and privacy review panel for new features
3. Debate mode: Choose freeform (rounds of moderated open discussion — the default) or structured (a fixed multi-phase debate choreography)
4. Expert members: Provide expert slugs one per prompt. Press Enter on a blank line when done. Example:

   Enter expert slug (or blank to finish): security-auditor
   Enter expert slug (or blank to finish): privacy-officer
   Enter expert slug (or blank to finish): senior-engineer
   Enter expert slug (or blank to finish): <blank — press Enter>

5. Max rounds (optional): How many deliberation rounds. Default: 3

After confirming, Council saves the panel to ~/.council/data/panels/security-review.yaml:

✓ Panel created: security-review
  Location: ~/.council/data/panels/security-review.yaml
  Members: 3 experts

Non-interactive creation

For scripts:

council panel create security-review \
  --description "Security, compliance, and privacy review panel" \
  --mode freeform \
  --experts security-auditor,privacy-officer,senior-engineer \
  --max-rounds 3

Step 2: Inspect your panel

View the full panel definition:

council panel inspect security-review

Output:

name: security-review
description: Security, compliance, and privacy review panel for new features
mode: freeform
experts:
  - slug: security-auditor
  - slug: privacy-officer
  - slug: senior-engineer
maxRounds: 3

Each expert slug must exist in your expert library (created via council expert create). If a slug is missing when you convene, Council will error with suggestions.

Step 3: Convene your custom panel

Use the panel by name with the --panel flag:

council convene --panel security-review "We're adding OAuth2 social login. Should we support Twitter/X given their API instability?"

What happens:

1. Council loads the security-review panel definition
2. Resolves all expert slugs from your library
3. Runs the debate using the panel’s configured mode and rounds
4. Creates a new session tied to the panel template

Output:

🏛️ Convening panel: security-review
✓ Panel loaded: 3 experts
  • Elena Vasquez (Security Auditor) — claude-sonnet-4.5
  • Dr. Kwame Osei (Privacy Officer) — claude-sonnet-4.5
  • Jordan Kim (Senior Engineer) — claude-sonnet-4.5

━━━ Round 1 ━━━

[Elena Vasquez — Security Auditor]
Let's assess the OAuth2 risks for Twitter/X integration...

Step 4: Manage your panel library

List all custom panels:

council panel list

Output:

Custom panels in your library:

  security-review
    Description: Security, compliance, and privacy review panel
    Members: 3 experts · Mode: freeform
    Created: 5 minutes ago

  architecture-decision
    Description: Technical architecture review with cross-functional stakeholders
    Members: 5 experts · Mode: structured
    Created: 2 days ago

Edit an existing panel (opens your default editor):

council panel edit security-review

Delete a panel:

council panel delete security-review

Deletion and past sessions

council panel delete removes the panel template from your library. Past debate sessions remain intact and can still be resumed or exported via council sessions — debate data is snapshotted when the session starts.

Advanced: Custom experts vs. generic fallbacks

Panel members can be:

1. Custom experts: Defined in your library with full personas (e.g., security-auditor)
2. Generic slugs: If a slug doesn’t exist as a custom expert, Council auto-composes a generic expert with that name at convene-time

This lets you mix stable, persona-driven experts with flexible, context-aware participants:

experts:
  - slug: security-auditor      # custom persona (consistent across debates)
  - slug: privacy-officer        # custom persona
  - slug: frontend-specialist    # auto-composed from context if not in library

What you learned

• ✅ Created a custom panel with council panel create
• ✅ Configured expert members, debate mode, and rounds
• ✅ Convened your panel template by name
• ✅ Managed panel templates with list, inspect, edit, delete

Next steps

• Tutorial 7: Ground a Debate in Documents — attach reference materials so your panel debates with real data
• Experiment: Create panels for your common decision scenarios (incident reviews, vendor evals, feature prioritization)
• Advanced: Combine panel templates with heuristic memory (--heuristic-memory) for experts that recall past debates