Debug Council: Research-Aligned Self-Consistency

Pure implementation of self-consistency (Wang et al., 2022). Each agent receives the raw user prompt and explores/debugs independently. No pre-processing, no shared context. Majority voting selects the answer.

Use this for bugs and problems with ONE correct answer.

Step 0: Ask User How Many Agents

Before doing anything else, ask the user how many solver agents to use:

How many debug agents would you like me to use? (3-10)

Recommendations:
- 3 agents: Faster, still reliable
- 5 agents: Good balance
- 7 agents: High confidence
- 10 agents: Maximum confidence (critical bugs)

Note: Each agent will independently explore the codebase and find the bug.
This takes longer but provides true independence per the research.

Wait for the user's response. If they specified a number (e.g., "debug council of 5"), use that.

Minimum: 3 agents | Maximum: 10 agents

CRITICAL: Pure Research Alignment

What This Means

NO orchestrator exploration - Do NOT read files or gather context before spawning agents
Raw user prompt to all agents - Each agent gets the user's original request, unchanged
Each agent explores independently - Agents discover the codebase themselves
True independence - No shared context, no cross-contamination

Why This Matters

The research shows that independent samples converge on correct answers. If we pre-process or share context, we:

Introduce orchestrator bias
Reduce independence
May miss what individual agents would discover

Workflow

Step 1: Capture the Raw User Prompt

Take the user's request exactly as stated. Do NOT:

❌ Read files first
❌ Explore the codebase
❌ Add context
❌ Rephrase or enhance the prompt

Just capture what the user said.

Step 2: Spawn Agents IN PARALLEL with RAW PROMPT

Spawn ALL agents simultaneously. Each gets the exact same raw prompt:

Task(agent: "debug-solver-1", prompt: "[USER'S EXACT WORDS]")
Task(agent: "debug-solver-2", prompt: "[USER'S EXACT WORDS]")
Task(agent: "debug-solver-3", prompt: "[USER'S EXACT WORDS]")
... (all in the SAME batch - parallel execution)

DO NOT modify the prompt. DO NOT add context. Raw user words only.

Step 3: Agents Work Independently

Each agent will:

Read and understand the user's request
Explore the codebase using their tools (Read, Grep, Glob, LS)
Identify the root cause
Reason through solutions (chain-of-thought)
Generate a complete fix

Each agent works in complete isolation - they cannot see what other agents are doing or have found.

Step 4: Track Progress & Collect Solutions

As agents complete, show progress to the user:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
                     AGENT PROGRESS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
☑ Agent 1 - Complete
☑ Agent 2 - Complete  
☑ Agent 3 - Complete
☐ Agent 4 - Working...
☐ Agent 5 - Working...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Update this display as each agent finishes. When all complete:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
                     AGENT PROGRESS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
☑ Agent 1 - Complete ✓
☑ Agent 2 - Complete ✓
☑ Agent 3 - Complete ✓
☑ Agent 4 - Complete ✓
☑ Agent 5 - Complete ✓

All agents finished! Analyzing solutions...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Collect all outputs for voting.

Step 5: Majority Voting

Group solutions by their core approach/answer:

Identify the key decision in each solution
Group solutions that make the same key decision
Count how many agents chose each approach

Voting rules:

Clear majority (≥50%): Select that solution, HIGH confidence
Plurality (highest < 50%): Select that solution, MEDIUM confidence
No clear winner: Analyze disagreement, LOW confidence

Step 6: Implement the Winner

Implement the majority solution. Do NOT synthesize or merge - use the winning answer as-is.

Step 7: Report Results

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
                    DEBUG COUNCIL RESULTS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## 📊 Voting Summary

| Approach | Description | Agents | Votes |
|----------|-------------|--------|-------|
| ✅ A | [description] | 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 | **5/7** |
| B | [description] | 3, 6 | 2/7 |

**Winner: Approach A** (71% consensus)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## 🔍 What Each Agent Found

### Agent 1
- Files explored: [list]
- Root cause identified: [summary]
- Solution: [brief]

### Agent 2
- Files explored: [list]
- Root cause identified: [summary]
- Solution: [brief]

... (for each agent)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## 🧠 Reasoning Highlights

### Why majority chose Approach A:
- Agent 1: "[key insight]"
- Agent 2: "[key insight]"
- Agent 4: "[key insight]"

### Why minority chose differently:
- Agent 3: "[different perspective]"

### Valuable minority insight:
[Any good ideas from minority that might be worth noting]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## 📈 Confidence: HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW

[Explanation based on voting distribution and reasoning quality]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## ✅ Selected Solution

[The complete winning solution]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## 🔧 Implementation

[The actual code change being made]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Configuration

Mode	Agents	Use Case
`debug council of 3`	3	Faster, still reliable
`debug council of 5`	5	Good balance
`debug council of 7`	7	High confidence
`debug council of 10`	10	Maximum confidence

If user just says

debug council

, ask them to choose.

Research Basis

Based on "Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models" (Wang et al., 2022):

Principle	Our Implementation
Same prompt to all	Raw user prompt, unmodified
Independent samples	Each agent explores independently
No shared context	No orchestrator pre-processing
Chain-of-thought	Agents use ultrathink
Majority voting	Count approaches, select majority

Why This is Slower (And Why That's OK)

Each agent independently:

Explores the codebase
Reads relevant files
Reasons through the problem
Generates a solution

This takes 3-10x longer than shared-context approaches, but provides:

True independence - no orchestrator bias
Diverse exploration - agents may find different things
Research alignment - matches the paper exactly
Maximum reliability - for when accuracy matters most

Use this for critical problems where getting it right matters more than getting it fast.

Agents

10 identical debug solver agents in

agents/

directory:

```
debug-solver-1
```
through
```
debug-solver-10
```

All agents:

Same instructions
Same temperature (0.7)
Same tools (Read, Grep, Glob, LS)
Use ultrathink (extended thinking)
Focus on finding the ONE correct answer

Diversity comes from sampling randomness and independent exploration, not different prompts.

debug-council

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content