Stress-test an idea with a panel of judges

One agent gives you one opinion. A hard call — a pitch, a product, a campaign — wants several, from people who disagree. Vancetope lets you stand up a council: a named panel of distinct personas that argue a question out and hand back one synthesised verdict. Define it once; consult it for the rest of the project.

Here we build a Got-Talent-style jury — a ruthless market perfectionist, a pop-culture trendsetter, an unconventional fan-favourite, and an empath — and throw a real pitch at it. It runs on Vancetope’s Zaphod engine (a multi-head council); you never touch that name — a wizard writes it for you.

Table of contents

  1. Build the panel once
  2. The verdict
  3. Consult it again, anytime
  4. Keep the outcome as a document
  5. What this shows
  6. Where to go next

Build the panel once

In a chat, open the Wizards panel and pick Create a council. Give it a name, a purpose, and the members — each with a personality, a focus, and a catchphrase. Add an optional test question and it runs the panel the moment it’s built.

Create a council — 2 steps
The Create a council wizard, filled in with a name, purpose and members
Step 1Fill the form: a name (talent), the panel's purpose, and each member's persona. A test question at the bottom makes it run right away.
The wizard's generated prompt sitting in the chat composer
Step 2Hit Generate prompt and the wizard writes the instruction into the chat for you — "create a council… save it under 'talent'… run it once with this test question." Send it.

Behind the scenes the agent hands this to Slart, which writes a reusable council recipe and saves it under the name you chose. That’s a one-time setup — from now on the panel is a thing you can call by name.

The verdict

The panel deliberates — each member answers in their own voice — and the council hands back one synthesised verdict, not four separate essays. Here it judges a pitch: a TikTok channel where an artist paints hyper-realistic celebrity portraits while pulling goofy faces to trending audio.

The council's synthesised verdict, with each judge's distinct take

A YES-IF, with the disagreement intact: the Head Judge scores it 4/10 (“gimmick-first, market-second”), the Trendsetter calls it “algorithmic catnip”, the Fan Favourite loves it (9/10), the Empath finds the human hook — and the synthesis turns that spread into one clear recommendation. The friction is the point; a single agent would have smoothed it away.

Consult it again, anytime

The panel doesn’t vanish with the answer. In the same chat, just ask it another question — “Ask talent the following question: …” — and the whole council runs again on the new problem. Define the board of advisors once, bring every subsequent decision to it.

Keep the outcome as a document

A verdict in a chat scrolls away. Ask the agent to write it up — “Write a conclusion of the answer into a document for me” — and it saves a structured document and hands back a link you can click.

From chat to document — 2 steps
The agent's reply with a clickable link to the saved document
Step 1The agent writes the document and replies with a clickable link — "Done. Saved as Talent Council: … Conclusion."
The saved conclusion document open in Cortex
Step 2Click it and the document opens in Cortex — verdict, the pivot, what makes it work, the risk, signed off by the panel. A real artifact you can keep editing.

What this shows

  • Many voices, one answer. A council keeps the disagreement that makes feedback useful, then synthesises it — instead of the flattened single opinion one agent gives you.
  • Define once, reuse forever. The panel is saved by name; every later question in the project can be put to the same board.
  • From talk to artifact. The conversation becomes a document you own and can keep working on — not a message that scrolls away.

Where to go next