quorumdeck

A terminal console for running several AI agents — on different models, from different providers — side by side in one session.

Most terminal LLM clients give you one model at a time and a dropdown to switch. quorumdeck starts from the opposite premise: the interesting thing is what happens when a Claude agent, a GPT agent and a local Llama agent all answer the same question at once, and you can see the answers, the latency and the cost next to each other.

Bring your own model. Bring several.

┌─ Claude · anthropic/claude-opus-5 ─┬─ GPT · openai/gpt-5 ───────────────┐
│ › Design a token bucket limiter    │ › Design a token bucket limiter    │
│                                    │                                    │
│ Use a monotonic clock and lazy     │ A token bucket needs four pieces   │
│ refill rather than a background…▌  │ of state: capacity, tokens,…▌      │
│                                    │                                    │
│      1204→318 tok · $0.0089 · 4.1s │      1204→402 tok · $0.0051 · 2.8s │
└────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────┘
 ready  ·  fanout × 2  ·  1922 tok  ·  $0.01

Status: alpha (0.1). The single and fanout patterns work end to end. debate, pipeline and judge validate in config but are not implemented yet — see ROADMAP.md.

Why this exists

Install

Requires Python 3.11+.

# Run without installing
uvx quorumdeck@0.1.0a1

# Or install
uv tool install quorumdeck --prerelease=allow    # or: pipx install --pip-args=--pre quorumdeck

Releases are pre-1.0 alphas for now, so installers need to be told to accept them. Once the orchestration patterns below are all implemented, 0.1.0 proper drops the extra flag.

Quick start

deck config init                 # writes ~/.config/quorumdeck/agents.yaml
deck keys set anthropic          # prompts; stored in the OS keychain
deck                             # launch the TUI

One-shot, no UI — pipes and scripts welcome:

deck run "Explain this stack trace" < trace.txt
deck run --pattern fanout "Which index would you add here?"

Configuring a deck

agents.yaml is the whole interface. Precedence: --config → ./quorumdeck.yaml → ~/.config/quorumdeck/agents.yaml.

version: 1

deck:
  pattern: fanout        # single | fanout | debate | pipeline | judge
  title: Compare

defaults:
  temperature: 0.7
  timeout_s: 120

agents:
  - id: claude
    name: Claude
    model: anthropic/claude-opus-5
    system_prompt: Answer concisely. Show the tradeoff, not just the answer.

  - id: gpt
    name: GPT
    model: openai/gpt-5

  - id: local
    name: Local
    model: ollama/llama3.3
    api_base: http://localhost:11434

Model ids are LiteLLM ids: provider/model. More in examples/.

Orchestration patterns

Unimplemented patterns are rejected at runtime with a clear message rather than silently falling back — the config schema is stable ahead of the runtime on purpose.

Keys

deck keys list                   # where each provider's key comes from
deck keys set openai             # store in the OS keychain (never echoed)
deck keys rm openai

Environment variables (ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, …) always win over the keychain, so CI and containers work without a keyring backend. Local backends like Ollama and credential-chain backends like Bedrock need no key at all.

Keyboard

Architecture

The layering is the load-bearing decision, not an aesthetic one:

src/quorumdeck/
  core/        agent · orchestrator · session · events · messages · costs
  providers/   base (the port) · litellm_provider (the only adapter today)
  config/      schema (pydantic) · loader · secrets (keychain)
  tui/         app · widgets · screens
  cli.py

Two rules hold it together, and both are enforced by the test suite:

1. core/ imports no vendor SDK and no UI framework. It is pure async Python over its own event vocabulary, which is why every orchestration pattern is testable against a scripted fake provider with no network.
2. tui/ imports no provider. It consumes core events. Adding a backend never touches the UI; adding a UI never touches a backend.

If LiteLLM turns out to be the wrong engine, replacing it means writing one new module in providers/ that satisfies the Provider protocol — roughly 80 lines — and changing nothing else.

Development

uv sync
uv run pytest
uv run ruff check .
uv run textual run --dev quorumdeck.tui.app:QuorumDeckApp   # with devtools

Contributions welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md. The most useful places to start are listed in ROADMAP.md.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.