CLI reference

roundtable <command> [args]. With no command, ask is assumed — roundtable "question" and roundtable ask "question" are the same.

Commands

Command	What it does
ask "q"	Convene the council on a question (default command).
auth [provider]	Configure provider API keys (masked paste → config.env).
models	Pick the model id used for each head.
heads	Enable or disable individual heads.
doctor	Show which heads are configured and reachable.
config	Show or edit ~/.config/roundtable/config.env.
mcp serve	Run the MCP stdio server (see MCP & harness).
mcp config	Print the MCP server JSON block to paste into a harness.
install	Detect installed coding harnesses and wire Roundtable into each.
update	Upgrade Roundtable in place.
version	Print the installed version.

ask flags

Flag	Description
-q	Quiet — print only the final synthesized answer, no per-head transcript.
--rounds N	Run a chaired deliberation of up to N rounds (default 1 = advisory). Consensus ends it early.
--heads a,b,c	Restrict the panel to a comma-separated subset (e.g. claude,grok,gemini).
--research	Allow tool-capable heads to gather fresh context before answering.
-c	Continue — include the previous question/answer as context.
--out FILE	Write the full transcript to FILE.
--timeout S	Per-head timeout in seconds.

Examples

# Quick advisory panel, final answer only
roundtable ask -q "Name one risk in this plan"

# Three-round deliberation, two heads, save the transcript
roundtable ask "Monolith or services for v1?" \
  --rounds 3 --heads claude,grok --out decision.md

# Let heads research before answering
roundtable ask "What changed in the latest spec?" --research

Exit codes

0 on a successful run. A non-zero exit means a hard failure (no heads configured, all heads timed out). Individual heads that error or time out are reported inline and don't fail the run as long as one head succeeds.

Configuration

All settings live in ~/.config/roundtable/config.env — a dotenv file, chmod 600, sourced (not parsed) at runtime. For back-compat it also reads ~/.api_keys if present. Edit it directly or via roundtable config.