add project documentation and archived design plan

CLAUDE.md so future Claude Code sessions have the five-phase workflow,
web-access rule, clarification-flag rules, tool permissions per agent,
and modification conventions at hand on session start.

README.md as the vault-facing overview for anyone opening this repo in
Obsidian, including the roster and where to find session artefacts.

docs/structure/initial-plan.md archives the design decisions that shaped
the current scaffolding — useful context when extending the system.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
+# Council
+
+A Claude Code deliberation system with a persistent memory layer, browsable as an Obsidian vault.
+
+You pose a question; a council of ten distinct personas (plus a Researcher and a Scribe) deliberates through a structured five-phase workflow, produces a voting table, and hands you the winning answer. Every session leaves a full transcript and persistent memory behind.
+
+## Quick start
+
+Inside the repo in Claude Code:
+
+```
+/council <your question>
+```
+
+The Moderator (the main Claude Code session) will interview you briefly for context, then kick off the Council. You'll be asked follow-up questions along the way — to clarify the brief, resolve research gaps, or break vote ties. At the end you get a voting table and the full winning answer; everything is archived to `sessions/<slug>/`.
+
+## The Council
+
+10 voting members, wild eclectic mix:
+
+- **Elif Tavşan** — retired stage magician & cold-reading coach
+- **Dr. Wren Okafor** — deep-sea marine biologist → systems ecologist
+- **Magnus Holt** — bankruptcy lawyer → insolvency-law lecturer
+- **Sister Beatrix Vale** — Benedictine nun → hospice counselor
+- **Nikolai "Niko" Prochazka** — Soviet cosmonaut trainer → wilderness survival instructor
+- **Dr. Ingrid Vaasa** — theoretical physicist (QFT) → independent researcher
+- **Kai "Breaker" Lindholm** — pro skateboarder → skatepark architect
+- **Cassian Vire** — investigative journalist → speculative-fiction novelist
+- **Marcelo "Marco" Tintori** — trained painter → 20 years as a corrections officer
+- **Mari Koskela** — marine engineer on cargo ships → anthropologist of maritime labor
+
+Plus two non-voting roles:
+
+- **Naima Quéré** (Researcher) — the only sub-agent with web access.
+- **Ansel Voss** (Scribe) — transcribes proceedings and writes session files.
+
+See `council-members.base` for the full roster as a table view in Obsidian.
+
+## Browsing sessions in Obsidian
+
+Open this repo as an Obsidian vault. The two Bases at the root provide table views:
+
+- **`council-sessions.base`** — every session, sortable by date / winner / whether a tie happened.
+- **`council-members.base`** — the full roster with prior jobs and lenses.
+
+Individual session files live at `sessions/<slug>/`:
+- `brief.md` — the Moderator's brief from the Phase-0 interview
+- `research/*.md` — the Researcher's per-topic notes
+- `initial-answers.md`, `revised-answers.md`, `votes.md` — phase transcripts
+- `outcome.md` — the canonical session file (winner, tally, full winning answer)
+
+## Deeper docs
+
+- `CLAUDE.md` — guidance for Claude Code when working inside this repo
+- `docs/structure/initial-plan.md` — the full design document