Imladris Deliberation

When to use

Reach for Imladris when a task is hard enough that one model's answer is risky: research questions, design/architecture trade-offs, "compare X and Y", expert critique, or anything where being wrong is costly. For quick lookups, answer directly — deliberation costs ~N panel calls + an analysis call.

Quick Start

Imladris is an MCP stdio server — there is no HTTP endpoint, port, or token. Your harness spawns imladris-mcp; call its tools directly. The /council prompt wraps the one-shot flow below. Use /council-session when the user wants a sustained back-and-forth with the same council.

Call the `imladris` tool:

• prompt (required), context (optional extra context for every panellist)
• preset or panel — which of your configured providers answer
• analysis_model — override which provider runs the analysis judge
• thread_id — present means session mode; Imladris reads/writes the local

~/.imladris/sessions/<thread_id>.json file and reconstructs messages[]

• prior_answer — in session mode, pass your previously authored answer for this

thread so Imladris can store it as the assistant turn

Inspect configuration and health with `imladris_status` (resolved roster, roles, presets, budget thresholds, budget estimates — never secrets or env-var names). Clear local session files with `imladris_clear_sessions`.

Workflow

1. If meta.ok == 0, every panellist failed and the tool returns a clean

meta.failure — say so instead of inventing evidence; let the harness fall back.

1. Send the user's question as prompt. Add context for files/constraints.
2. Pick a preset (your configured presets — use a local-only preset when the

data must not leave the network) or an explicit panel.

1. You are the final author. Read the analysis — especially blind_spots and

contradictions — and the raw_answers, then write the answer, preserving genuine disagreements and caveats rather than smoothing them away.

1. For a session, use the same thread_id on each turn and pass your last answer as

prior_answer. If the host drops it, Imladris backfills from stored analysis.

1. When the analysis flags a claim as low-confidence, verify it before relying on it.

Response Handling

• panel[] — per-provider status metadata (id, status, latency, tokens). The raw

answer text is returned in raw_answers[]; partial results are normal.

• analysis — consensus / contradictions / partial_coverage / unique_insights

/ blind_spots / confidence_notes. Do not treat consensus as proof.

• raw_answers[] — all successful panel answers, returned unconditionally.
• meta — timings, ok/failed counts, analysis provider id, cost estimate,

budget status, session warnings, and a typed failure if the deliberation degraded.

• thread_id / compacted — present on session responses; compacted means older

local history was omitted from the provider request.

• text — a Markdown rendering of the same content.