Council Mode Grows Up: Every Member Gets Tools

Council Mode is one of ChatVLM's most distinctive features: instead of trusting one model, you pose a question to a council of frontier models, watch them answer independently, and get a synthesis that weighs their agreements and disputes. Today it gets a major upgrade.

Every member gets tools

Until now, council members answered from their own knowledge. With this release, each council member can use tools independently — searching the web, reading sources, and verifying claims before taking a position.

That changes the character of a council run. Instead of five models recalling what they were trained on, you get five models doing their homework, each following its own research path. When they converge, that agreement means something. When they disagree, the synthesis can point at the sources behind each side.

A clearer view of the debate

We've also refreshed the Council Mode interface. Member answers are easier to scan side by side, tool activity is visible per member, and the final synthesis distinguishes consensus from contested ground at a glance.

When to reach for it

Council Mode shines when being wrong is expensive: architectural decisions, medical or legal reading (with your own professionals in the loop), competitive analysis, fact-checking a claim that smells off. One model can be confidently wrong; a tooled-up council has to be wrong in five different ways at once.

Council Mode is available on every plan — Free users get five runs a day, Pro and Ultra run it without limits. Pick your question, convene the council, and let them argue it out.