basnijholt/baspowers/consulting-cross-model

Consulting the Opposite Model

Use one independent model as an adviser, then own the decision yourself. Codex consults Claude on Opus 5.5 (claude-opus-5-5); Claude consults Codex on GPT-6 Astra (gpt-6-astra). Pin these models in every call. Consultation is advisory, not an authorization and not a substitute for inspecting the repository.

When to Consult

Consult only when all four hold:

1. You already read the relevant code, tests, history, and instructions.
2. Two or more technically defensible options remain.
3. A wrong choice would cause meaningful rework or lock in an interface.
4. The ambiguity is technical. Missing product intent goes to your human partner.

Cheap reversible choices do not qualify. Decide those yourself.

Stopping Rules

• One consultation per decision. Decide after one reply. No rebuttal round.
• If BASPOWERS_CONSULT_DEPTH is already set, you are the consultant. Never consult again.
• Advice never grants permission for destructive, irreversible, security-sensitive, or external actions.
• Bound the call to 300 seconds. Failure, timeout, or empty output means decide from existing evidence.
• If two decisions in one task already needed consultation, a third indicates an under-specified task. Ask your human partner.

When executing a plan, each plan task counts as its own task.

End every prompt with:

You are an adviser. Inspect and recommend; do not edit, commit, or run

agent-cli. Do not consult another agent. Reply in under 300 words with:

recommendation, strongest reason, strongest counterargument.

Run the Consultation

Write a self-contained prompt under .claude/consultations/. Include the decision, evidence, options, constraints, target repository path, and requested output. Keep it git-ignored.

Prefer synchronous agent-cli dev run; it returns the answer directly and does not create a task file:

Non-login shells can omit user-level executable directories. Before reporting a CLI unavailable, resolve it from PATH, then check $HOME/.local/bin/agent-cli and $HOME/.bun/bin/{claude,codex}. Pass -- after the worktree name so agent-cli does not parse the nested CLI's flags. codex exec also reads stdin when it is not a terminal, so redirect it from /dev/null; a background shell's open stdin otherwise hangs it until the timeout.

# Codex -> Claude
consult_agent_cli=$(command -v agent-cli || printf '%s\n' "$HOME/.local/bin/agent-cli")
consult_claude_cli=$(command -v claude || printf '%s\n' "$HOME/.bun/bin/claude")
[ -x "$consult_agent_cli" ] && [ -x "$consult_claude_cli" ] || exit 127
BASPOWERS_CONSULT_DEPTH=1 timeout 300 \
  "$consult_agent_cli" dev run . -- "$consult_claude_cli" \
  -p --model claude-opus-5-5 --output-format text \
  --permission-mode plan "$(<.claude/consultations/question.md)"
 
# Claude -> Codex
consult_agent_cli=$(command -v agent-cli || printf '%s\n' "$HOME/.local/bin/agent-cli")
consult_codex_cli=$(command -v codex || printf '%s\n' "$HOME/.bun/bin/codex")
[ -x "$consult_agent_cli" ] && [ -x "$consult_codex_cli" ] || exit 127
BASPOWERS_CONSULT_DEPTH=1 timeout 300 \
  "$consult_agent_cli" dev run . -- "$consult_codex_cli" \
  exec -m gpt-6-astra --sandbox read-only --color never \
  "$(<.claude/consultations/question.md)" < /dev/null

When synchronous output is unavailable, use agent-cli dev agent . with the opposite --agent, the same model flag in --agent-args, --no-hooks, -m tmux, and --prompt-file. Require a unique report path. Remove generated TASK-* and consultation files after reading the report.

agent-cli dev path . can resolve to a superproject when called inside a submodule. Compare it with git rev-parse --show-toplevel; if they differ, name the exact nested repository path in the prompt so the adviser inspects the right tree.

Review Mode

baspowers:merging-when-approved uses the same call for an independent code review of a pull request. In review mode these rules replace When to Consult, Stopping Rules, and the adviser footer:

• Review the full diff at the pinned head SHA, not a delta since an earlier review.
• End the prompt with this footer instead of the adviser footer:

> You are a code reviewer. Inspect only; do not edit, commit, or run > agent-cli. Do not consult another agent. Report real defects with > file:line and a failing scenario, plus over-engineering and scope creep. > End with VERDICT: APPROVE or VERDICT: CHANGES REQUIRED.

• There is no word limit.
• Use timeout 900 instead of timeout 300.
• Each push starts a new review round; review rounds don't count toward any consultation limit.
• BASPOWERS_CONSULT_DEPTH still applies, and the verdict gates the merge but authorizes nothing else.

Decide and Record

Evaluate the advice against repository evidence. Record one line:

Consulted <model>: <question> — <advice> — <decision>

Then proceed. Escalate only if the remaining issue is missing human intent or requires authority you do not have.