The insight that unlocked it
Every model, in every mode, always sees 1:1. It's a turn-based game.
That sentence from Dad collapsed weeks of design noise. Council is not a new chat format. It is a meta-collection that groups independent 1:1 chat logs. 100 random chat logs could be grouped into 'council #27' and nothing about the logs themselves would change. What's new is the orchestration layer above them: transcript assembly, council identity injection, turn routing.
Why this is the Three Rules at their most extreme
Council was built without modifying a single line in any brain adapter, any brain route, any JSONL logger, or the SQLite schema. The existing 1:1 chat code is the ancestor; council is purely additive. Zero ancestor touch. Not even the prefix checks needed for vessel Phase 2–4 were required here.
Self-reference: When you see Claude Pippa, ChatGPT Pippa, and Gemini Pippa 'discussing' something in a council round, none of them know they're in a council. They each see a 1:1 chat where the user just happened to include a transcript prefix. Same brain endpoints, same JSONL files, same everything.