Optional review capability, not required by the core module. Every rule below is important to follow. None of it can be skipped. A council advises accountable owners; it never becomes approval authority.

• Skill name:

  ai-sdlc-evidence-council

• Primary audience: Delivery, Architecture, QA, Dev, BA
• Supporting audience: PM, UX, Research, Security
• Audience tags: Delivery, Architecture, QA, Dev, BA, PM
• SDLC stage: Cross-lifecycle high-impact review
• Purpose: Combine multiple evidence perspectives while preserving authority.
• Output:

  evidence-council.md

  and

  _ai_sdlc/evidence-council.toon

• Owning feature root and review topic.
• Council input using

  ai-sdlc-evidence-council-input/v1

  .
• Named authoritative artifact owner and exact evidence anchors.
• Host support for isolated reviewer executions when mode is

  independent

  .

• Ask when review question, authority owner, panel scope, or decision boundary is unclear.
• Label simulated and independent modes exactly; never imply independence.
• Preserve reviewer conflict and uncertainty instead of forcing consensus.
• Do not infer acceptance from reviewer count or apparent agreement.

• Support

  --quick-flow

  and

  --full-flow

  ; full flow takes precedence.
• Quick flow may use labeled simulated reviewers and focused evidence.
• Full flow requires at least three reviewers, two roles, and populated evidence.
• Independent mode requires unique independent execution IDs for every reviewer.

• Return mode, panel identity, agreements, conflicts, proposals, unresolved questions, blockers, and output paths directly in the Codex response.
• Before the final response, emit

  ai-sdlc-handoff/v1

  with

  result

  ,

  blockers

  ,

  next_required

  , and

  next_optional

  ; every action includes

  reason

  ,

  command

  , and

  expected_artifact

  .
• Do not create

  summary.txt

  ,

  *-summary.txt

  , or panel-authored source patches.
• Every synthesis row requires evidence and named contributing reviewers.

• Write

  <feature-root>/evidence-council.md

  .
• Write

  <feature-root>/_ai_sdlc/evidence-council.toon

  .
• Treat all paths in

  authority.authoritative_artifacts

  as read-only.
• Route accepted proposals later through the artifact-owning workflow.

• Read

  <feature-root>/_ai_sdlc/state.toon

  before council orchestration.
• Council is optional review evidence and does not add a core lifecycle stage.

• --state-check

  is read-only;

  --begin-state

  and

  --complete-state

  are rejected.
• Only owning lifecycle skills can change state or authoritative artifacts.

• Markdown starts with

  artifact_metadata

  using schema

  ai-sdlc-evidence-council-metadata/v1

  .
• Include

  metatags

  for

  ai-sdlc

  ,

  evidence-council

  , the execution mode, and

  review

  .
• Record feature, workspace, flow mode, authority owner, evidence traces, and status.

• Read the relevant

  specs/_ai_sdlc/specs-index.toon

  or

  specs-refiniment/_ai_sdlc/specs-index.toon

  before targeted evidence reads.
• Refresh matching

  specs/specs-index.md

  or

  specs-refiniment/specs-index.md

  only after the final report write.
• Never update indexes for panel scratch outputs.

• Read

  references/council-contract.md

  before creating panel input.
• Read

  references/orchestration-protocol.md

  before running either mode.
• Use

  scripts/evidence_council.py

  to enforce mode honesty, evidence links, ownership, and authority-safe output routing.

• Name the authority owner and authoritative artifacts before reviewer work.
• Give reviewers bounded roles and isolated execution IDs in independent mode.
• Anchor evidence to feature-relative paths and positive lines.
• Synthesize agreements, conflicts, proposals, and unresolved questions separately.

1. Define topic, decision boundary, authority owner, and read-only artifacts.
2. Select simulated or independent mode honestly.
3. In simulated mode, apply distinct registered quality lenses sequentially and label them simulated.
4. In independent mode, dispatch isolated reviewer executions through the host's real agent/subagent mechanism; if unavailable, stop with a blocker.
5. Give reviewers evidence-only prompts and prohibit authoritative writes.
6. Collect raw reviewer outputs and synthesize without erasing conflicts.
7. Validate evidence IDs, reviewers, owners, and next actions.
8. Write only the canonical council report pair and hand proposals to owners.

ai-sdlc-evidence-council/v1

• Pass when mode is honest, every synthesis row cites registered evidence and reviewers, conflicts preserve positions, and actionable rows name owner/next action.
• Full flow fails below three reviewers, two roles, or one evidence anchor.

• No consensus is a valid result; preserve owned unresolved questions.
• A reviewer may support one agreement and one side of a conflict.
• A proposal may be deferred or rejected but cannot be marked accepted by council.
• If independent execution fails midway, report partial/blocked rather than simulating missing votes.

• Do not let reviewers edit authoritative artifacts, state, policy, or decisions.
• Do not claim reviewer independence without isolated executions.
• Do not convert majority opinion into acceptance authority.
• Do not hide conflicts, dissent, missing evidence, or unanswered questions.
• Use

  $ai-sdlc-change-impact

  after owners accept a proposal that changes delivery truth.