feat(llm-council): add --max-tokens CLI flag

[23r2efewvcs]

Fixes #88.

What

skills/llm-council/scripts/council.js hardcoded max_tokens: 4000 in both callOpenAICompat (line 87) and callAnthropic (line 103). This is too small for modern reasoning models (Nemotron-3-Ultra, GLM-5.2, DeepSeek-V4, Claude with thinking enabled), which routinely need 8K–32K output tokens for their reasoning chain. With the current default they either:

• return an empty choices[0].message.content (the model exhausted its budget before emitting any final answer), or
• silently truncate the chain, producing a degraded synthesis.

There's no way to override this from the CLI — users have to monkey-patch the constant.

Change

• Introduce a tiny RUN_OPTS struct (const RUN_OPTS = { max_tokens: 4000 };) at the top of the file.
• Both call functions read RUN_OPTS.max_tokens instead of the literal.
• Add --max-tokens N parsing in cmdRun (default preserves current behavior).
• Document the flag in usage().

Reproduction (before this PR)

node council.js run "Top 3 criteria Georgian diaspora in EU uses to pick a bank." \
  --provider openrouter --models "nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b:free" --chairman "..." \
  --timeout 300000
# phase1_responses.json: { "success": true, "content": "", "latency_ms": 18916 }

After this PR

node council.js run "<query>" --models "..." --chairman "..." --max-tokens 16000

Scope

This PR is intentionally minimal — only adds the knob, doesn't touch retry/timeout/sequential logic (separate concerns for separate PRs). Diff: 13 +, 4 -.

Backward compatibility

Default 4000 preserved verbatim. Existing users see no behavior change unless they pass --max-tokens.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features

  • Added a --max-tokens option to customize the maximum response length when running the council script.
  • The default remains 4,000 tokens.
  • The setting is applied consistently across supported AI providers.

• Documentation

  • Updated command-line usage information with the new option, default value, and guidance.

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Review details

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: defaults

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: f4dc6aa1-1df0-42c3-a249-cbd3cba3c04f

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 22251ab and 2635c07.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• skills/llm-council/scripts/council.js

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The council script adds a --max-tokens CLI option, defaults it to 4000, applies the value to OpenAI-compatible and Anthropic requests, and documents the option in the usage output.

Changes

Maximum token configuration

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Configure and apply runtime token limit skills/llm-council/scripts/council.js	Adds the default RUN_OPTS.max_tokens value, parses the --max-tokens override, uses it in both provider request payloads, and documents the option in usage().

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: adding a configurable --max-tokens CLI flag.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	The changes match issue #88 by making max_tokens configurable via --max-tokens, defaulting to 4000, and updating both API paths and usage text.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	The diff appears scoped to the requested max_tokens configuration and documentation updates, with no unrelated changes evident.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests

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Actionable comments posted: 1

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
In `@skills/llm-council/scripts/council.js`:
- Line 171: Validate args['max-tokens'] before assigning RUN_OPTS.max_tokens:
require a fully numeric, integer value greater than zero, rejecting malformed
inputs such as prefixes and NaN. On invalid input, emit a clear CLI error and
stop without mutating the runtime configuration; otherwise assign the parsed
value.

🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

• Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
• Create a new PR with the fixes

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ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: defaults

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: f02f9fe6-a774-4b65-95b0-a8ef044affb4

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 7f7209d and 22251ab.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• skills/llm-council/scripts/council.js