The Synthetic Board
A board decides. Nobody in the room is paid to disagree. Counsel of AI produces the record of what was considered, what was challenged and what was rejected — in a form that attaches to a board minute.
> In beta. Free for life runs every pack as a dry run — the shape of the record with no model consulted. We set each board up personally. Nothing on this site is a measured result — see Status.
The governance gap
Structured dissent is the thing a mid-market board cannot currently buy.
No independent challenge
Genuine independent challenge is priced for larger companies than these, and an independent director is not in the room at the moment a decision arises. A structured challenge is. We have not sourced a defensible figure for what an independent director costs, so we do not publish one.
Advisers are conflicted or absent
The people who would challenge a recommendation often prepared it, or are unavailable that week.
Generic AI agrees with you
A single model optimises for fluency and consensus. It returns the room’s own view, better written, with no record of what was tested.
The trap. Directors already paste board papers into consumer chatbots. That leaves no record of what was challenged — and the pasting is itself a governance problem: sensitive material in a tool the board never sanctioned. A director who cannot show what was challenged has an artefact of having asked a machine, not a record of having exercised judgment.
The Decision Assurance Pack
Thirteen gated sections. An export blocks if any one of them is missing, and the pack carries a digest — its fingerprint — so the one on file can be checked years later.
- 01Decision summaryWhat was decided
- 02Seat positionsEach adviser’s final position, in its own words, with the option it declared
- 03Consensus badgeAgreement counted from those declarations — never scored
- 04Dissent mapWhat was challenged, and by whom
- 05Options consideredAlternatives — doing nothing is always one of them
- 06Assumptions ledgerWhat is assumed, flagged for verification, with a review-by date the pack itself enforces
- 07Risk register deltaNew risks arising from this decision
- 08Action registerNamed owners and due dates, carried to your meeting’s register
- 09Evidence citationsSource-bound; a privileged document is cited by title only
- 10Methodology traceWhich provider, which model, which region — per call, with the provider’s country
- 11Controlled-use noticeFixed text. Cannot be edited.
- 12Export validationA named human signatory, asked for their second factor again at the point of signing
- 13ProvenanceWhich engine ran, how many providers answered, and whether it was a dry run — inside the digest
Sections 06, 11 and 13 are the ones that change what the pack is. The assumptions ledger keeps unverified inputs visible, so they cannot read as evidence, and once its review date passes the pack says so on its first page. The controlled-use notice is fixed text; if it is missing or altered, the export is blocked — an edited notice is a different document, not a weaker one. Provenance sits inside the digest, so a dry run cannot be passed off as a live pack without the fingerprint changing.
Ten seats. Five providers, in region.
Six seats are mandated; the board chooses four from a library of eight, and chooses each seat’s provider and model. Quorum is a floor, not a target. The Mandated Reviewer cannot be removed.
Five model providers are available in region today — Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Google and Amazon, all served from Sydney — and the board chooses each seat’s provider and model, or gives a seat a panel of several with a moderator. A debate must span at least two providers before it may run: one model reasoning with itself is a summary, not a challenge. Where a seat’s provider is headquartered offshore, the pack prints the country beside the region on every call it made.
The eight-persona library includes one Industry Specialist (offshore) seat — the only seat a board may fill with a model processed outside its jurisdiction, and only with a model whose retention terms have been read and recorded. None has been yet. When one is, the pack names the seat and says where its calls were processed.
The Mandated Reviewer runs after consensus forms — and also when it does not. It reviews six risk categories, and finding nothing in all six is a valid result. A reviewer obliged to object produces a record of theatre rather than diligence, which is why it is scored on coverage and never on objections raised.
> In beta · 10 seats · 5 providers in region · provider and model chosen per seat · quorum floor 2 · AU in-region · NZ lock refused, not substituted
Engineered friction
The gates cannot be switched off. That is the product.
Export blocked
A pack missing any of the thirteen sections cannot leave. Enforced in code, not in policy — and shown on the sample pack.
Needs verification
A claim without a primary source is flagged inline and listed in the assumptions ledger.
Divergence recorded
Unresolved objections stay in the pack. They are not summarised away.
Methodology trace
Which model, which region, which residency class — recorded per call, not per architecture diagram.
> A deadlocked debate aborts and records. It does not produce a partial pack.
From matter to minute
The pack is one decision’s record. A board’s year is a list of meetings, and the platform now holds that frame too.
A matter
Paste or upload the board paper, state the decision, set out the options — doing nothing is always one. Up to five documents from a library of twenty travel with it. Identifiers are removed before anything is stored; a privileged document is never sent to the panel.
A meeting
Schedule it, build the agenda, issue the notice — printed, or emailed to directors as a link to read signed in. Never an attachment. The board pack is drawn from your library; each decision on the agenda carries one matter, and that matter’s pack is the decision’s appendix.
The minute
The board writes its own decision record beside the pack, in its own words — the platform never drafts a minute. The minute bundle names each pack by its digest and staples the packs behind it. Actions carry to a register that follows the board from meeting to meeting, and the next meeting confirms this one’s minute.
On Free, every pack is a dry run. The structure, the sources and the gates are real; no model is consulted, and every page is stamped so it can never be read as advice. It is the right way to learn what the record looks like before a live panel deliberates on your matter.
Australian data residency
Residency, not sovereignty. The distinction matters and we state it.
In-region inference
Processed in Australian regions and recorded per model call, not asserted once in an architecture diagram. Every provider the platform can invoke is listed on the trust centre, generated from the same catalogue the engine reads.
Jurisdiction lock
Set on the account and applied to every matter. Australia today. A New Zealand lock is refused with a named reason — there is no New Zealand inference path yet, and it is not served from Sydney and called local. An unrecognised jurisdiction stops the session rather than falling through to a default.
Separate regimes
Australia and New Zealand have different law and different regulators. We do not treat them as one market.
What we do not claim
Sovereignty. Some model providers are US-headquartered running on in-region infrastructure. Residency is where processing happens; sovereignty is whose law can compel access. We claim the first.
The decisions that bring a board here
Not every decision. The ones a director may later be asked about.
A cyber incident
Respond, notify, negotiate? Decided in hours, examined for years — and examined against what the board knew at the time.
An acquisition or divestment
The recommendation arrives polished. The question is what would have to be true for it to be wrong, and who tested that.
Senior appointments and remuneration
The decisions most likely to be revisited with names attached — and the ones where challenge in the room is rarest.
A major capital commitment
Large, hard to reverse, and built on assumptions. A record of which assumptions were flagged is worth more than the spreadsheet.
Trading through difficulty
When a company is under pressure, the law asks what the directors considered and when. That is a question about the record.
A safety-critical call
Officers carry a personal duty of due diligence on workplace safety. It is discharged by what was actually examined, not by what was intended.
The common shape: a decision where a director may one day have to answer what did the board consider, and what was challenged, before it decided? Directors’ duty of care does not require the board to be right. It requires the board to have been informed — and the pack is a record made at the time, not a reconstruction offered afterwards.
Three questions to ask any AI tool near a board decision — including ours. Where is the record of what was challenged? When something required is missing, does it stop or does it ship anyway? Which model answered, and where was it processed? We built the product around those three answers. Ask the same questions of anything else you evaluate.
There is no Australian AI Act
Which is exactly why the record matters.
When economy-wide mandatory AI guardrails were shelved in December 2025, the standard of care did not disappear. It moved to directors’ duties, the Privacy Act, the Australian Consumer Law, and to what regulators, insurers and enterprise customers expect.
“We complied with the legislation” was always a weak defence for an AI failure. Where there is no legislation, it is not available at all.
We sell no compliance deadline, because there is not one. We sell the record a director can point to when asked what they considered.
What we do not claim
A governance product caught overstating its governance has an unrecoverable problem.
We do not shield a director
Liability sits where the law puts it. We produce the record; the board must engage with it. A pack that is attached but not discussed evidences that a tool ran.
We do not establish diligence
Whether diligence occurred depends on what the directors actually did. Your minutes record that — our pack supports it.
We do not replace advice
The pack sits alongside your counsel and your accountant. It challenges; it does not opine, and it is not legal, tax or financial advice.
We have not measured anything yet
Every quantitative figure in our material is a design target with a date. None is a measured result. The beta exists to produce the first measurements, and a figure will appear here as measured only once it is.
Pricing
All prices exclude GST. Free for life, then three plans with included packs and a flat overage. No hidden cap.
- Every pack a dry run — unlimited
- Matters, library, meetings and minute
- Upgrade any time; downgrading to Free keeps your matters readable
- 5 decision packs included
- Self-serve or partner-delivered
- 15 minutes support per month
- 15 decision packs included
- Direct onboarding available
- 30 minutes support per month
- 60 decision packs included
- Full onboarding included
- 2 hours support per month
Additional packs A$29 each on a paid plan. A pack is charged when it is exported, not when a debate starts; a debate that halts produces no pack and no charge. The included allowance is published rather than being a fair-use limit you discover in the month you most need the platform. Support entitlements are stated because they are a term, not an internal assumption. Payment is taken on Stripe’s own pages; no card detail is entered on or held by this platform.
Where we actually are
Told plainly, because you would find out anyway.
Complete
Design library approved
Sixty-nine artifacts, approved in four tranches on 12 September 2026. The gap register records 69 gaps raised, 40 closed, 22 open, 6 pending a decision and 1 monitored. Six assertion suites pass against fixtures. Counts are as at that date; the register is the authoritative source.
In beta
Platform deployed, in beta
The platform is deployed and in use with the pilot cohort. Beta means the gates are being proven in live sessions, not that they are proven. A full security review has not yet been completed.
Unmeasured
Nothing is published as measured
Every metric we quote is a design target with a date. Beta sessions produce the first measurements; a figure is published as measured only after it survives verification.
In progress
Pilot cohort onboarding
Twenty accounts. Hypotheses and stop conditions are signed and dated before a customer onboards — the pilot measures demand as much as it sells.
Free for life is available; live packs are for subscribed boards and the pilot cohort. We onboard every board personally rather than through open sign-up — write to us and we will set your account up with you. Pilot weeks one and two — governance framing and matter selection — still run before a cohort member’s first live session, so a new member starts work before they touch a live panel. We would rather tell you this now than have you discover it in onboarding.
Start free, or register for the pilot cohort
Free for life — dry-run packs, no card. Twenty AU and NZ boards and advisory firms in the pilot cohort for live panels.
We set every board up personally. There is no open sign-up: tell us who you are below and we will onboard you — on Free for life, where every pack is a dry run and nothing is charged, or into the pilot cohort for live panels. Either way a person, not a form, creates your account.
What happens next. This form opens an email in your own mail client addressed to us. Nothing is transmitted or stored by this website — there is no backend behind it yet, and we would rather say so than imply one. You keep a copy of exactly what you sent.
Platform access
In beta. Accounts are set up personally — Free for life or the pilot cohort — not through open sign-up.
We create each board’s account with you: an email address, a verification link and a jurisdiction lock, set once and applied to every matter. A lock the platform does not serve is refused rather than guessed at. On Free for life every pack is a dry run and nothing is charged.
Already set up? Sign in at counselofai.com/app. A second factor is offered at sign-in and is asked for again when you sign an export. If you are locked out, write to us and we will restore access with you directly.
Not set up yet? Tell us about your board and we will onboard you.
Privacy
Short, because this site does very little. Last changed 19 August 2026, when analytics was added.
What this website collects
Nothing, unless you accept analytics. This site asks once, at the bottom of the page, whether we may count your visit using Google Analytics. Until you accept, no cookie is set and nothing is sent — if you decline, or simply ignore the question, that stays true for as long as you use the site. Declining is remembered in your own browser so we do not ask again.
If you do accept, Google Analytics sets a cookie and records which pages you viewed, roughly where in the world you are, and how you arrived — a search, a link, or typed directly. That data goes to Google and is subject to Google’s terms, which means it leaves Australia. We use it to see which pages are worth keeping. We do not use it for advertising: ad storage and ad personalisation are switched off, and there is no advertising tag on this site.
You can change your mind by clearing this site’s data in your browser, which removes both the cookie and our record of your choice, and you will be asked again on your next visit.
There is still no form submission endpoint on this website. The pilot-interest form opens an email in your own mail client; it does not transmit anything to us on its own. Accounts are created with us, on the platform, under the platform’s own handling — not on this site.
What we hold if you write to us
The contents of your email, held for the purpose of responding to you and administering the pilot cohort. We do not sell it, share it with advertisers, or use it for anything else. Ask us to delete it and we will.
Please do not send us board material
Email is not the platform. Board material belongs inside a platform session, where handling is controlled and recorded — not in a mailbox. If you write to us, send a description of the decision, not the papers.
Hosting
This site is hosted on Amazon Web Services infrastructure. Standard web server logs are generated by that infrastructure.
Contact
Privacy questions to contact@counselofai.com.
This notice describes the website only. The platform’s handling of customer data is governed by the terms agreed with each pilot participant, and this notice will become a full Australian Privacy Principles notice as the platform moves toward general availability.