Use an advisor for independent judgment. The advisor never edits, merges, commits, ships, or makes the final decision. Use Coordinator for implementation workers; it also composes native specialists and this advisor into one workflow when a task needs all three.
For a strong general-purpose advisor, recommend gpt-6-astra through the
Codex CLI from any host with shell access, including Claude Code, Codex,
Grok Build, and OpenCode. Honor an explicit model or channel preference. See
codex-cli.md for preflight and dispatch.
If the user wants Astra or another Codex model to build rather than advise, route through Coordinator. Load ../coordinator/references/workers/codex.md. Advisor stays read-only; do not dump worker CLI recipes here.
When to consult
Consult at a decision that could waste substantial work if it is wrong:
- after orientation but before the first substantive edit on a hard or ambiguous task
- when two distinct attempts have failed, or before changing approach
- after the deliverable is durable, as an independent final review gate
Skip the advisor for mechanical work and facts a deterministic check can answer faster. One clear consult is the default. Use a panel only for a high-stakes decision that benefits from deliberately different viewpoints.
Run the consult
- Detect the current host and available channels. Read channels/README.md, then load exactly one selected channel guide. Load one Coordinator host guide only when native host behavior matters.
- Verify the intended provider, model, and authentication lane before sharing task context. Never infer subscription use from an installed CLI or ambient credential.
- If the channel crosses a provider boundary, tell the user what task and repository context will be sent before the first run. Never send secrets, credentials, unrelated files, private plan links, or fragment keys.
- Package a standalone consult using advice-contract.md. Give repo-aware advisors the exact checkout or worktree to inspect and forbid edits.
- Run the advisor with enforced read-only permissions. Preserve the complete output and verify that the intended advisor genuinely ran; a primary-agent response or silent model fallback is not a consult.
- The main weighs the verdict against direct evidence. Act on it or explain the disagreement. If new evidence conflicts with the answer, use one narrow reconciliation consult.
Required report
Record:
- advisor channel, actual provider/model, and authentication path
- disclosure state and exact context shared
- read-only permission evidence and process result
- session identifier when available, complete log path, and full verdict
- whether the intended advisor ran without fallback
The current main remains responsible for acceptance criteria, reconciliation, tests, and every git operation.
Stop conditions
- Authentication, model availability, or the read-only boundary cannot be verified: stop and offer setup.
- The external advisor returns no verdict: retry once with the advice contract, then report a transport failure.
- The advisor asks to implement: route that work through Coordinator with a bounded spec.