How it Works

Brief in, memo out.

Boardroom follows a deterministic workflow. Every run starts with a brief and ends with a decision memo. Here is exactly what happens.

Brief → Board → Dissent → Memo

1. Author the brief

The operator writes a structured brief in Markdown. The brief has four required sections: Situation, Stakes, Constraints, and Key Question. The brief frames the decision - it does not suggest an answer.

brief.md

# Brief

## Situation

Facts only, no spin.

## Stakes

What is the upside and downside?

## Constraints

Budget, timeline, capacity, regulatory.

## Key Question

Single most important question for the board.

2. Assemble the board

The CEO starts a deliberation session with /ceo-begin. The board is loaded from configuration - six specialist agents, each with a persona file and optimization directive.

Board composition is defined in ceo-and-board-configuration.yaml. Members can be added, removed, or modified. Each member has a name, color, and persona file.

3. Deliberation rounds

The CEO sends prompts to board members using the converse tool. Each member receives: their persona context, the board instructions, the brief, and the CEO's prompt.

Members respond with their specialist analysis. The CEO synthesizes responses, then decides whether to run follow-up rounds or close the deliberation.

Each board member runs as an isolated Pi subprocess using claude-sonnet-4-6. The CEO runs on claude-opus-4-6. Costs are tracked per-member in microUSD precision.

4. Stress-test consensus

If round one produces quick alignment, the CEO can run a follow-up round to stress-test the consensus. The Contrarian is specifically designed for this - probing weak evidence, avoided arguments, and timing risk.

A vote shift (e.g., accept → defer) after stress testing is a valuable signal, not a problem. It means the quality gate caught something.

5. Collect votes

The CEO calls end_deliberation to close the session. Each member submits a final position: a vote (accept, reject, defer, or other), a 1-2 sentence statement, and a summary of their reasoning.

Votes are captured with rationale. A "defer" with a reason is more informative than a bare "accept."

6. Synthesize the memo

The CEO writes the final decision memo. The memo contains:

  • Session metadata (run ID, brief ID, cost, duration)
  • The CEO's decision and recommendation
  • Board vote table with per-member votes
  • Recommendation rationale
  • Conditions and risks
  • Immediate next moves
  • Final board positions from each member

7. Persist artifacts

All artifacts are written to relative paths under the deliberation directory:

artifact tree

ceo-agents/

  briefs/{id}/brief.md

  deliberations/{id}/

    conversation.jsonl

    state.json

    board/

      revenue.md

      product-strategist.md

      technical-architect.md

      contrarian.md

      compounder.md

      moonshot.md

  memos/{id}/memo.md

State files are written atomically. Paths are always repo-relative. Costs use canonical cost_usd_micros. Durations use elapsed_ms. Stale runs are detected and auto-recovered.