Documentation

Consult

A read-only advisor that knows your real project. Ask it anything - it recommends, it never acts.

Consult is the senior voice you can pull aside mid-build. Ask the orchestrator a question and get an answer grounded only in your project’s real context. It is read-only: it recommends, it never acts.

An advisor, not an actor. Consult reads your project, weighs the trade-offs, and tells you what it would do, then stops. It starts no runs, writes no files, and changes nothing. The decision stays yours.

Ask it anything

vibe consult "Should this auth refactor use a heavier review flow?"
vibe consult "Why did the last run block?" --run <runId>
vibe consult "What's left here?" --task <taskId>
vibe consult "..." --file src/server/routes/consult.ts

In the dashboard, the Consult button in the top bar opens the same thing.

It only sees your project

Consult is not a generic chatbot. It answers only from controlled project context: your VIBESTRATE.md, your project.yml (providers, profiles, crews, policies), recent run outcomes and validation evidence, agent-visible annotations, and, when you pass them, a task, a run, or selected files. All of it is read-only, path-guarded, secret-redacted, and bounded.

It is honest about what it can’t verify

Because the orchestrator is itself a model, an answer states a confidence and lists caveats - the things it could not verify from the evidence - instead of presenting model confidence as fact.

It may recommend actions (start a run, pick a flow, request sandbox mode) and, when it has an evidence-backed improvement, propose a VIBESTRATE.md update.

A proposal is never auto-applied. It is saved for review, and a human applies it explicitly (vibe guide apply <id>, or the Apply button on the consult card). Applying appends the reviewed text to the manual through a guarded writer (Action Broker file.write, path-guarded, and refused if the content carries secret-shaped tokens), so you review the diff before committing.

Consult runs through the same read-only assist path as the rest of Vibestrate: broker-gated, no worktree, no writes. Its evidence is audited under runs/consult/.

Surfaces

CLI vibe consult "<question>" [--task <id>] [--run <id>] [--file <path>] [--json]. Manage the guide with vibe guide init | show | proposals | apply <id> | reject <id>.

Shell Type consult "<question>" at the command prompt.

API POST /api/consult; GET /api/vibestrate, POST /api/vibestrate/init, GET /api/vibestrate/proposals, POST /api/vibestrate/proposals/:id/apply|reject.

Web The Consult top-bar button, with Apply or Dismiss on a proposed update.

Related: vibestrate-md, supervisor, safety.