Personal Advisory Board

A private web app where you can ask questions and receive responses from your curated board of advisors — each one grounded in their real public thinking, frameworks, and voice.

Current Board (12):

• Naval Ravikant — Entrepreneur & Philosopher
• Bill Gurley — Founder, P3 Institute (fmr. GP, Benchmark)
• Chamath Palihapitiya — Founder, Social Capital
• Daniela Amodei — President & Co-Founder, Anthropic
• Dario Amodei — CEO & Co-Founder, Anthropic
• Fabricio Bloisi — Group CEO, Prosus & Naspers
• Stanford SEP Faculty — GSB Executive Program Collective Wisdom
• Michelle Obama — Author, Leader & Former First Lady
• Joao Guimaraes Rosa — Brazilian Writer & Diplomat
• Clarice Lispector — Brazilian Writer
• Ryuichi Sakamoto — Composer, Musician & Activist
• Yvon Chouinard — Founder, Patagonia

Advisors answer independently, in sealed rooms: no coordinating, no echoing, conflict welcome. Click any member's name for a mini-bio.

How a session works:

1. Round One (sealed rooms). Each selected member answers alone and casts a formal vote (YES / NO / CONDITIONAL). The Chair issues a weighted Board Verdict.
2. Round Two (open debate, optional). Click "Open the debate": every member sees the ballot and the others' arguments, and may hold or flip. The Chair rules on the final ballot, naming who moved and why.
3. Follow-ups. Push back on any single advisor in a thread under their card.
4. Quorum mode. Toggle next to the ask button: the Chair convenes only the 5-6 most relevant members plus one deliberate counterpoint, instead of the full board.
5. The record. History keeps every session on your device. Record what actually happened in the "What happened?" box, then run Board Review to have the Chair audit which calls aged well.
6. Reading Room. What the board is reading, saying, and listening to, fed by reading.json and refreshed weekly by a cloud routine (see REFRESH_PLAYBOOK.md).

Personas carry a dated RECENT VIEWS & ACTIVITY section refreshed monthly by a scheduled cloud agent (see REFRESH_PLAYBOOK.md). After either routine runs, git pull locally to get the update.

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Sharing with friends (deployed mode)

The app deploys to Vercel. Set these environment variables in the Vercel project:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY    required — every question spends your API credits
BOARD_ACCESS_CODE    recommended — the shared code friends type to enter
ELEVENLABS_API_KEY   optional — enables advisor voices

With BOARD_ACCESS_CODE set, the site shows an access gate; give friends the URL plus the code. Each visitor's profile, history, and outcomes live in their own browser (localStorage), so friends get their own private board sessions on your deployment. Leave BOARD_ACCESS_CODE unset locally and the gate stays off.

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First-Time Setup

Step 1 — Run the setup script (installs Node.js and dependencies):

cd "/Users/mtazevedo/Documents/Claude/Claude Projects/Advisory Board"
bash setup.sh

Step 2 — Add your Anthropic API key: Open the .env file and paste your key:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-your-key-here

Get a key at https://console.anthropic.com

Step 3 — Start the app:

npm start

Step 4 — Open in browser:

http://localhost:3000

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Daily Use

cd "/Users/mtazevedo/Documents/Claude/Claude Projects/Advisory Board"
npm start

Then go to http://localhost:3000

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Editing Your Board (Monthly Updates)

Click Edit Board in the top-right corner to:

• Add or remove advisors
• Update their name, title, and accent color
• Edit their Persona Prompt — this is the most important field. It tells the AI how that person thinks, what frameworks they use, and how they communicate.
• Toggle advisors on/off without deleting them

All changes are saved to advisors.json — a plain text file you can also edit directly.

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Customizing the AI Model

Open .env and change the MODEL line:

MODEL=claude-opus-5     ← highest quality (default)
MODEL=claude-sonnet-5   ← faster, slightly less depth

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Files

Advisory Board/
├── server.js          ← Node.js server
├── advisors.json      ← All advisor personas (edit here)
├── public/
│   ├── index.html     ← Web interface
│   ├── style.css      ← Styles
│   └── app.js         ← Frontend logic
├── .env               ← Your API key (never share this)
├── package.json
└── setup.sh           ← One-time setup script