Tribunal

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Tribunal

Tribunal assembles every CLI vendor you have installed into a flat panel of peers and puts them to work together — not as a hierarchy where some agents are junior labor, but as independent voices that can disagree with each other.

That disagreement is the signal.

When a Claude-family model, a Codex-family model, and a Kimi-family model all reach the same conclusion independently, you can trust it. When they diverge, Tribunal surfaces the disagreement and explains why each vendor arrived where it did — so you can make an informed call instead of inheriting one model’s blind spots.

The four moves

Fan one question to N vendors → anonymized cross-critique → single cited verdict. **Available now.** [How it works →](/tribunal/council/) Each vendor attempts the same coding task in isolation → round-robin diff review → ranked merge. **Available now.** [How it works →](/tribunal/forge/) N parallel attempts → rubric scoring → verified winner before any commit. **Available now.** [How it works →](/tribunal/race/) One task through a plan → architect → implement → review pipeline, each phase run by a different vendor, persisted to `.ptah/specs`. **Available now.** [How it works →](/tribunal/relay/)

How the panel is assembled

Tribunal builds its panel automatically from the CLI vendors installed on your machine. It picks one agent per vendor family to maximize diversity:

Vendor family	CLI agent used
Anthropic	ptah-cli (Claude)
OpenAI	codex
GitHub	copilot
Moonshot	ptah-cli (Kimi)
Z.AI	ptah-cli (GLM)
Ollama Cloud	ptah-cli (Ollama Cloud)
OpenRouter	ptah-cli (OpenRouter)
Cursor	cursor

If a vendor isn’t installed, it doesn’t appear on the panel. The composition is data-driven — add a new vendor and it joins the next Tribunal automatically.

Minimum panel size

Tribunal requires at least 2 distinct vendor families to form a meaningful panel. With only one vendor installed, it runs that single agent and labels the result a single-voice answer (not a tribunal). Install two or more CLI providers to enable full cross-vendor debate.

Tribunal vs. Orchestration

Tribunal and the everyday orchestration workflow solve different problems. Use the right tool for the job:

Dimension	Orchestration	Tribunal
Structure	Hierarchical (orchestrator → senior leads → CLI helpers)	Flat peer panel (all vendors at the same level)
Use case	Deliver a feature — plan, implement, review, ship	Evaluate an approach, make a judgment call, or get a second opinion
Output	Working code, tests, migrations	Council: verdict with citations. Forge/Race: ranked implementation
Vendor relationship	CLI helpers are junior labor, subordinate to the orchestrator	All vendors are peers; no single vendor “owns” the task
When disagreement happens	Orchestrator arbitrates and continues	Disagreement is the primary signal — Tribunal surfaces and explains it
Best for	”Build X”, “Refactor Y”, “Add tests for Z"	"Which approach is sound?”, “Second opinion on this”, “Let the models debate”

Tip

If you’re building something, use Orchestration. If you’re deciding something, use Tribunal.

The one exception is Relay — it runs orchestration’s build-it pipeline on the vendor panel, with each phase handled by a different vendor and no sub-agents. Reach for it when you want structured delivery but want the work done by external CLI vendors with built-in cross-vendor review.

Invoking Tribunal

Tribunal activates in response to natural language. Trigger phrases that start a Council:

• “Convene a council on this”
• “Get a second opinion from the panel”
• “Have the models debate this approach”
• “Multi-vendor review of X”
• “What do the other vendors think?”

Trigger phrases that start a coding move — Forge, Race, or Relay:

• “Forge this across the panel” / “Race the models on this”
• “Relay this task across the panel” — plan, build, and a different vendor reviews
• “Orchestrate this with CLI vendors instead of sub-agents”

You can also select the Tribunal Conductor harness explicitly from the harness picker to start a structured Tribunal session.

Platform requirements

Tribunal is available in the Ptah Electron desktop app and via ptah-cli in headless mode. It requires at least one non-default CLI vendor installed (Codex, Copilot, Moonshot, Z.AI, or similar) to form a multi-vendor panel. VS Code extension users can access Council through ptah-cli if it’s installed on their PATH.