Councils
Councils are Ishvana’s structured deliberation surfaces for decisions that need more than one analytical angle. They are not customizable chatbot panels and they do not call external model providers. As of v1.2.0 on May 1, 2026, each council runs a fixed roster of Divinity Engine agents through local handler rounds, then a deterministic composer turns the accumulated findings and items into a report plus drafts you can review.
The useful distinction is this: Chat routes one message to the best handler. Councils run a planned multi-agent workflow and preserve the whole session so you can revisit the reasoning later.
What Councils does
Section titled “What Councils does”Councils live in the worldbuilding and marketing workflows, with review surfaces in the app sidebar. Start a session by choosing the council surface, writing the question, selecting relevant lore context, and starting the run. The system then:
- Creates a session with the fixed council roster for that surface.
- Loads pinned lore and project context.
- Runs the council’s local handlers across several rounds.
- Streams progress and member contributions as NDJSON events.
- Composes the handler output into a structured HTML report.
- Produces draft entries or marketing assets for you to accept, reject, or edit.
Nothing becomes canon automatically. Drafts are proposals until you accept them.
The three council surfaces
Section titled “The three council surfaces”Three debate-style surfaces shipped in v1.2.0:
Worldbuilding Council
Section titled “Worldbuilding Council”For worldbuilding questions: geography, history, politics, magic systems, cosmology, cultural drift, and structural continuity.
Fixed roster:
- Archivist — runs consistency and contradiction sweeps against existing canon.
- Worldsmith — runs name generation and world-extension passes.
- Scholar — pulls real-world research and synthesis where the question benefits from outside grounding.
The composer produces 3 to 8 lore-entry drafts plus a council report.
Character Council
Section titled “Character Council”For character decisions: motivations, arcs, relationships, backstory, knowledge state, and whether a character’s actions fit what the project has established.
Fixed roster:
- Psychologist — runs entity extraction and consistency checks.
- Dramatist — runs the insight scan for narrative function and dramatic pressure.
- Relationship Analyst — runs relationship and plot analysis.
The composer produces 1 to 3 character drafts plus a character council report.
Creative Studio
Section titled “Creative Studio”For marketing strategy and promotional copy. It uses the same structured council architecture, but the output lands in the Marketing module instead of the Legendry.
Fixed roster:
- Storyteller — seeds the copy.
- Strategist — pulls market and audience research.
- Analyst — runs the marketing copy balance check at high strictness.
The composer produces four marketing assets — book blurb, short blurb, tagline, and elevator pitch — plus a Studio report. See Creative Studio for the full workflow.
How sessions run
Section titled “How sessions run”- Pose a question — ask something specific enough for the council’s handlers to act on. “How should the magic system interact with political power structures?” is better than “tell me about my world.”
- Attach context — pin any lore entries the session must treat as source material.
- Run the council — the fixed roster emits contributions through local handler dispatch. Long sessions stream progress as they work.
- Review the output — the report summarizes what the handlers found, what the roster converged on, what remains unresolved, and which drafts were produced.
- Accept or reject drafts — drafts stay outside canon until you approve them. Accepted lore drafts can be undone from the acceptance flow.
The session transcript, report, drafts, source context, and configuration are saved for review and re-run.
Draft outputs
Section titled “Draft outputs”Worldbuilding Council drafts are proposed Legendry entries. Each draft includes a title, content, entry type, tags, and a rationale. Character Council drafts follow the same accept/reject flow but are scoped to character knowledge and relationship output. Creative Studio drafts are marketing assets rather than lore.
Drafts are deliberately review-first. The council can surface useful structure, names, relationships, or positioning language, but you decide what belongs in the project.
What is not customizable
Section titled “What is not customizable”The council rosters are fixed in v1.2.0. You do not create your own panelists, edit member personalities, swap in personas, or override member instructions. That older copy described the pre-Divinity design. The current implementation gets variation from:
- the council surface you choose,
- the lore and project context you attach,
- the local handlers in the fixed roster,
- the project genre overlay used by the Authored Library,
- and the drafts you accept, reject, or edit afterward.
When to use councils
Section titled “When to use councils”Councils are most useful when you want:
- Multiple analytical angles on a worldbuilding, character, or marketing decision.
- Stress-testing before you promote an idea into canon.
- Draft artifacts you can review instead of a loose conversation transcript.
- A saved decision record that explains why a recommendation or draft exists.
Don’t reach for councils when:
- A single chat route or specialist panel is enough.
- You need a simple factual lookup. Ask WorldKnowledge or Lagan directly.
- You need prose craft analysis. Use Hawken or the editor analysis panels.
- You want to configure a debate cast. That control is not part of v1.2.0.
Session persistence
Section titled “Session persistence”Every council session is saved with its transcript, member contributions, report, generated drafts, source lore ids, round count, and timestamps. You can revisit past sessions from the history panel and re-run them when the project has changed.