this is a really interesting direction. i've been experimenting with “self-critique” style pipelines (plan → solve → critique) and they often help smaller models punch above their weight.
the agent council idea is also appealing, although the cost/latency trade-off usually becomes the tricky part when multiple models run in parallel.
curious how often the judge actually disagrees with the first candidate answer in practice. does the council mostly refine reasoning, or does it sometimes lead to completely different conclusions?