What is the Council Method?

The Council Method is a system for getting answers out of AI you can actually trust, created by Jason Santiago and taught in his book Let the AI Be Smart. It runs in three passes. First, you ask several different AI models the same question separately, so none of them can copy another. Second, you show each model the other models’ answers and make it defend or correct its own, and every claim has to name a source you can open, because models agreeing is not proof. Third, one model you trust weighs all of it into a final verdict that keeps only what survived, and a person signs it. It solves one specific problem: a single AI sounds exactly as confident when it is wrong as when it is right, and on real work, confident and wrong gets expensive.

By Jason Santiago, author of Let the AI Be Smart. As of 2026-07-06.

How a run actually works

A Council run is three passes, and you can do all of it by hand in the chat windows you already use.

The independent pass. Open two or three different models in separate chats. Paste the same question and the same context into each. Do not let them see each other's answers. Collect every response.
The cross-examination pass. Copy the answers and hand each model the other models' answers, never its own. One model's answer goes to all the others, not back to itself. Ask each one to challenge the weakest claim it sees and then defend or revise its own answer based on what the room said. Along the way, force every load-bearing claim to name a source you can open, because agreement is not evidence. Collect the revised answers.
The synthesis pass. Paste all of it, the independent answers and the revised ones, into whichever single model you trust most as your synthesizer. Ask for a verdict that keeps only what survived, names where the room agreed and where it split, and states honest confidence. You read it and sign it.

What it is not

It is not asking three chatbots and going with the majority. Majority vote fails when the majority shares a blind spot. The method synthesizes on evidence, not on votes.

It is also not a software product you have to buy. It runs in the chat tabs you already have. The copying between models is the only real overhead, which is why platforms like the Council Room on this site automate it for you. The full protocol is published free as the Council Protocol.

Where it came from

Jason Santiago built the method while building FORGE, his own multi-agent software platform, where several AI models kept confidently breaking each other's work. Making them check each other by design became the method. He filed a patent application on the system behind it on December 5, 2025.