The Council of Invisible Counselors

Give each counsellor a Markdown heading, a named role, and - importantly - what they are accountable for, because a role with something at stake argues harder than a role with a job title. Reasoning models hold a multi-part structure well, so you can run three or four voices plus a synthesis in one pass. If you convene the same council often, a Custom GPT that holds the panel and the output format turns it into a tool you just hand a decision to.

• Give each voice something to lose, not just a job title.
• Require each to name the best point against itself.
• Ask which counsellor you would be wisest to overrule.
• A recurring panel belongs in a Custom GPT.
• Treat any figure a simulated expert cites as fiction.

My tech company in Hyderabad - 60 people, services work for overseas clients - is considering a mandatory four-day work week for everyone. Do not tell me the benefits. Convene a panel and make them argue it out.

Each panellist has something at stake, and should argue like it:

### 1. Head of People
Accountable for attrition and for filling open roles. Argue FOR: morale, retention, productivity per hour, and the hiring advantage in a market where everyone is competing for the same engineers.

### 2. Chief Financial Officer
Accountable for margin. Argue AGAINST: utilisation and billing on client projects, the cost of coverage, what happens to a fixed-cost base against a 20% cut in available hours, and the risk that five days of work compresses into four and produces burnout rather than rest.

### 3. Delivery Head
Accountable for client satisfaction. Argue from the operational reality: overseas clients expecting weekday response, on-call and incident cover, handover between people who are off on different days. This voice should be neither for nor against but should state plainly what would break.

### 4. A Senior Engineer With Two Small Children
Accountable for nothing except their own working life. Argue from what this would actually mean day to day - and if they think the real benefit would be flexible hours rather than a fixed fourth day off, say that.

**Each panellist must end with one line headed "The best argument against my own position".** A panel where everyone is confident is a panel that has told me nothing.

### Synthesis
Then, in your own voice:
- Where do they genuinely conflict, and where are they talking past each other?
- Which objection is fatal if unaddressed, and which is manageable?
- Design a pilot: who, how long, and the specific numbers that would mean stop. Name the metric that would tell me it is failing before the clients tell me.
- Which panellist would I be wisest to overrule, and what does it cost me to overrule them?

Do not invent statistics or cite studies. If the CFO's argument needs a utilisation figure, have them name the figure they would need to see from my own books.

I want to understand the long-term impact of India's 1991 economic reforms properly, which means hearing it from people whose experience of it was different. Present the analysis as four perspectives, each with a Markdown heading, then reconcile them.

### 1. A Major Industrialist
Someone running a licensed manufacturing business before 1991. The end of the License Raj, access to imported inputs and foreign capital, the ability to compete globally - and also the loss of a protected position. Be honest that liberalisation was not uniformly good news for incumbents.

### 2. A Small-Scale Shop Owner in a Tier-2 City
Competing with large and foreign brands, changing supply chains, the arrival of organised retail, and credit. Where did this go well, and where did it hollow out a local economy?

### 3. A Social Economist
Income inequality, urbanisation, the informal labour sector, regional divergence between states, and what happened to public provision. Distinguish what is attributable to the reforms from what was happening anyway.

### 4. A Public Sector Bank Employee
The perspective usually left out. What changed inside an institution that went from being an instrument of policy to competing with private and foreign banks.

Then:

### Where These Accounts Conflict
Not a summary - the actual disagreements. Industrialist and social economist can both be describing the same decade accurately and reach opposite verdicts; show how.

### What Historians And Economists Actually Dispute
Name the live scholarly arguments: whether growth accelerated in the 1980s or only after 1991, how much of poverty reduction is attributable to reform, whether inequality was a necessary cost. Say what each side argues.

Rules: these perspectives are composites, not real people - do not invent quotes or attribute views to named individuals. Do not cite specific statistics, growth figures or Gini coefficients from memory; where a number matters, say which number would settle the point and that I should look it up. End with "What I am least sure of".

I need a concept for a new Indian superhero. Run it as a writers' room, not a brainstorm - I want the disagreement to do the work.

### Writer A - The Traditionalist
Powers rooted in Indian mythology: the Astras, tapas-earned boons, the idea that power is granted conditionally and can be withdrawn. Argue that this is what gives an Indian hero a moral architecture that imported superhero logic does not have.

### Writer B - The Futurist
Powers from technology: argue that mythological heroes are a nostalgia trap, that the interesting India is the one building satellites and payment systems, and that a hero whose power is infrastructure is more original than a hero with a divine weapon.

### Writer C - The Script Editor
In the room for one reason: to ask what the hero does in chapter one and who they fight. Interrupt both writers whenever they are designing a mythology instead of a story. If the concept has no scene, say so.

**Make them actually disagree.** Writer A should attack B's concept as rootless; B should attack A's as a costume over a Marvel template. At least one of them should change their mind about something, because a debate where nobody moves is just two monologues.

### The Synthesis
Then build one concept from the argument - not a split-the-difference compromise, but a concept that resolves the tension. Give me: the hero, the source and the cost of their power, the antagonist, the setting (be specific - a named city, not "a futuristic metropolis"), and the opening scene.

### The Problem With It
Finally, in your own voice: what is weakest about the synthesised concept, and which of the two original positions it quietly abandoned. I would rather know that now.

Avoid: a hero whose power is simply "all the Astras", and anything close to an existing published or filmed Indian superhero - if the concept resembles one you know of, say which.