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.
> Platform in build. Pilot cohort forming now. 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
An independent director costs A$40–80k a year and is not in the room at the moment a decision arises.
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. A board pack put through a generic assistant produces no dissent record and no evidence trail. 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
Eleven mandatory sections. An export blocks if any one of them is missing.
- 01Decision summaryWhat was decided
- 02Consensus badgeAgreement, and on what basis
- 03Dissent mapWhat was challenged, and by whom
- 04Options consideredAlternatives including doing nothing
- 05Assumptions ledgerWhat is assumed, flagged for verification
- 06Risk register deltaNew risks arising from this decision
- 07Action registerNamed owners and due dates
- 08Evidence citationsSource-bound and authority-ranked
- 09Methodology traceWhich model, which region, per call
- 10Controlled-use noticeFixed text. Cannot be edited.
- 11Export validationA named human signatory
Sections 05 and 10 are the ones that change what the pack is. The assumptions ledger keeps unverified inputs visible instead of letting them read as evidence. The controlled-use notice is fixed text: an export is blocked if it is absent or altered, because an edited notice is a different document rather than a weaker one.
Ten seats. Three providers each.
Quorum is a floor, not a target. Seat ten cannot be removed.
Six seats are mandated. Four are selected to match your actual board. Each seat is a synthesis across three independent model providers rather than a single model, so a seat cannot inherit one vendor’s blind spot.
Seat ten 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.
> 10 seats · 3 providers per seat · 2 clouds · AU in-region
Engineered friction
The gates cannot be switched off. That is the product.
Export blocked
A pack missing any of the eleven sections cannot leave. Enforced in code, not in policy.
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.
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.
Jurisdiction lock
Australia or New Zealand, selected per matter. An unrecognised jurisdiction fails closed rather than falling through to a default.
Separate regimes
Australia and New Zealand have different climate and disclosure regimes with 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.
Climate data requests
The obligation that actually reaches you is your customer’s, not the regulator’s.
| Group | First reporting period | Two-of-three test | Reaches a 5–199 staff business? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Group 1 | FY from 1 Jan 2025 | Revenue ≥ $500m, gross assets ≥ $1b, or 500+ staff | No |
| Group 2 | FY from 1 Jul 2026 | Revenue ≥ $200m, gross assets ≥ $500m, or 250+ staff | No |
| Group 3 | FY from 1 Jul 2027 | Revenue ≥ $50m, gross assets ≥ $25m, or 100+ staff | Some |
| Supply chain | Now | Any supplier to a Group 1 or Group 2 customer | Most |
We do not tell a forty-person company it has a statutory climate deadline. It almost certainly does not. What it does have is a customer asking for Scope 3 data with a contractual deadline and no statutory relief — and that is a board decision with options, a downside case, and a commercial consequence for declining.
New Zealand is a separate regime. Climate reporting entities there are large listed issuers, banks, insurers and investment managers under the Financial Markets Conduct Act. No New Zealand business in this size range is a climate reporting entity, and the 2025 reforms reduce that population further.
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. Pilot participants help produce the first measurements.
Pricing
All prices exclude GST. Included packs, then a flat overage. No hidden cap.
- 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. 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.
Where we actually are
Told plainly, because you would find out anyway.
Complete
Design library complete
Sixty-eight specifications, forty-five gaps found and closed, four assertion suites passing.
Not built
Platform not yet deployed
Infrastructure is authored and unapplied. No security review has been completed.
Unmeasured
No pack has been produced
Every metric we quote is a design target with a date. None is measured.
In progress
Pilot cohort forming
Twenty accounts. Hypotheses and stop conditions are signed and dated before the first customer onboards.
Expected timeline: 30–60 days to first platform access. Pilot weeks one and two — governance framing and matter selection — run without the platform, so a cohort member can start before the build completes. We would rather tell you this now than have you discover it in a demo.
Register interest — pilot cohort
Twenty AU and NZ boards and advisory firms.
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
Not yet open.
There is no sign-in yet, and we have not built one that pretends otherwise. The platform has not been deployed and has not completed a security review. A login form that accepted your credentials today would be collecting them into nothing, which is both useless and a poor first demonstration of a governance product.
What happens when it opens
Pilot cohort participants receive access directly from us, with credentials issued individually rather than through open self-registration. Access opens jurisdiction-locked from the first session — you select Australia or New Zealand before a matter can be created.
Expected within 30 to 60 days. Weeks one and two of the pilot programme — governance framing and matter selection — run without the platform, so a cohort member can begin before that.
Privacy
Short, because this site does very little.
What this website collects
Nothing. There is no analytics script, no advertising tag, no cookie set by this site, and no form submission endpoint. The registration form opens an email in your own mail client; it does not transmit anything to us on its own.
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
We are not yet in a position to receive confidential board packs or personal information about other people. The platform’s redaction controls are specified but not deployed, and no security review has been completed. 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 as it stands during the build. It will be replaced with a full Australian Privacy Principles notice before the platform accepts customer data.