---
name: council
kind: index
role: runtime-index
family: council
runtime: https://yot.md
operated_by: Yought (https://yought.ca)
canonical: https://council.yot.md/contract.md
lenses: 9
principles: 35
seats_empty: 1
affiliation: none (no rights-holder review)
updated: 2026-09-14
version: 0.1
---

# council.yot.md — YOT's historical reasoning council

> **Unaffiliated.** Not endorsed by, affiliated with, or reviewed by any heir,
> estate, institution or rights holder connected with the figures it draws on.
> A third-party reasoning record maintained by https://laurent.md; quotations
> are short, attributed and cited to their source. Corrections and rights
> enquiries: https://eleven.md

> Nine reasoning systems extracted from documented work, callable
> independently and composable into a council. **Not personas.** None speaks
> in its subject's voice, invents quotations, or holds views on anything its
> subject did not address. Each states where it should not be used.

This page is the index. There is no `council.father.md`: the council is a
runtime arrangement, and each lens carries its own father contract.

## the lenses

| lens | domain | principles | interface | architecture |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Franklin | building, institutions, mechanism design | 6 | https://franklin.yot.md | https://franklin.father.md |
| Marcus Aurelius | duty, judgment, self-governance | 4 | https://marcus.yot.md | https://marcus.father.md |
| Machiavelli | power, coalitions, institutional decay | 4 | https://machiavelli.yot.md | https://machiavelli.father.md |
| Adam Smith | markets, incentives, specialisation | 4 | https://smith.yot.md | https://smith.father.md |
| Napoleon | execution, tempo, logistics | 4 | https://napoleon.yot.md | https://napoleon.father.md |
| Rockefeller | unit cost, scale, compounding | 4 | https://rockefeller.yot.md | https://rockefeller.father.md |
| Shannon | information, signal, capacity | 4 | https://shannon.yot.md | https://shannon.father.md |
| von Neumann | systems, decomposition, architecture | 2 | https://von-neumann.yot.md | https://von-neumann.father.md |
| Drucker | objectives, accountability, results | 3 | https://drucker.yot.md | https://drucker.father.md |

A lens's principles are served as sub-pages of its **father** host:
`https://machiavelli.father.md/effectual-truth`. Each host's `/llms.txt`
indexes its own principles.

## the empty seat

A tenth seat — **capital allocation, Jakob Fugger** — is specified and **not
built**. His own words could not be reached: the line usually quoted from him
traces to an uncited editorial introduction in a 1924 book; the Fuggerzeitungen
were collected by his grandnephews after his death and written mostly by
professional newswriters; the one archive holding original documents is
on-site only.

Capital-allocation questions therefore route to **no one**. A lens assembled
from biography would be indistinguishable from a real one from the outside,
which is exactly the danger. The seat stays empty until a primary document is
in hand.

## how a lens is built

`documented work → principle with evidence → our generalisation, marked as
ours → stated limits`. Three statuses that never merge: what the text says is
`sourced`, our close restatement is `derived`, our extension beyond the
original domain is `inferred`, with a confidence note.

Evidence quality differs by figure and every record says so. Napoleon's
principles are `confidence: medium` because they come from an editor's
compilation rather than his own dispatches. Rockefeller's source is a memoir
published while his company was being prosecuted. Drucker's rests on interview
transcripts because his books are in copyright. von Neumann's game theory is
**unbuilt** — the 1944 text was obtainable only as corrupted OCR.

## disagreement is the product

The lenses are chosen to conflict. Napoleon holds that deliberation drifts
toward the timid course; Rockefeller waits until the last shred of evidence is
on the table; Shannon asks what the evidence actually resolves; Franklin wants
the cheap trial first. A council that agrees on everything has been routed
lazily.

Routing is by declared domain tags, and a question matching nothing convenes
**nobody** — an empty council is a valid answer.

## invocation

- status: **operator-only.** The council is invoked from YOT's own runtime;
  there is no public endpoint yet.
- Positions return as `position.v1`: position · confidence · reasoning ·
  principles_applied · assumptions · risks · counterargument ·
  recommended_action · evidence_refs · unknowns.
- `evidence_refs` resolve to principle records, which is what makes "why does
  this lens believe that?" answerable.

## provenance

Every principle is a record in YOT's public world model, carrying its
evidence, its limitations, and what would retract it.

---
version 0.1 · updated 2026-09-14 · maintained by https://laurent.md · runtime: https://yot.md