Use source-synthesis

Answer a question from a set of sources the user supplied

Answer a question from a set of sources the user supplied — papers, reports, articles, interview notes, emails — saying only what the material supports, labelling anything that comes from elsewhere where it appears, counting a source that repeats another once, and giving a labelled estimate when the user needs a figure the sources don't settle. Written in the length and format the user asked for; a full cited literature review only when that is the ask.

Reach for it when the user hands over several sources and asks to "synthesise these", "what do these papers say", "pull together what we know", "literature review", or "where do the sources agree and disagree".

Install it

npx skilldrop-cli install source-synthesis                 # Claude Code, your user folder
npx skilldrop-cli install source-synthesis --project       # Claude Code, this repo
npx skilldrop-cli install source-synthesis --ide cursor    # or kiro, codex, antigravity, copilot

It is part of the Research pack: --pack research installs it with its neighbours.

It ships scripts, so it needs Python 3 (standard library only, nothing to install). What they may touch is declared in its manifest.

Ask for it

Say it the way you would to a colleague. Requests like these route to it:

"Here are six papers on remote work and productivity. Synthesise what they say, with citations to page numbers."
"Pull together the findings from these four analyst reports and show where they agree and disagree"
"I've got eight customer interview transcripts. Give me the cited themes and how strong the evidence is for each."
"Write a short literature review from these sources, and don't add anything that isn't in them"

Requests like these belong to a different skill, so it shouldn't answer them:

"Help me plan the research before I start looking for sources on four-day weeks"
"Turn this Slack thread into a brief I can hand to the ADR generator"
"Pull the decisions and action items out of these meeting notes"

If another skill answers instead, ask for this one by name: "use source-synthesis".

Check what you get

A good result:

Nothing reads as coming from the sources that doesn't. Every outside input is marked as outside in the sentence where it appears; no gap is filled from memory.
Echoes are counted once. A figure repeated by a second source is traced to its origin.
The sources' own sums are checked, and any that don't add up are named.
The answer opens the reply and fits the requested size and format.
A needed figure gets a worked, labelled estimate with its range and what would settle it, not a refusal.
Findings are no stronger than their sources. Hedges, approximations and confounds survive; hearsay stays hearsay.

See a worked example

four day week

Use something else when

Deciding what to research, which sources to look for and when to stop — research-plan
Ranking rival explanations for something that happened — hypothesis-comparison
Turning one thread or transcript into a brief for another skill — brief-intake
Pulling decisions and action items out of meeting notes — decision-log
A market or competitor analysis with a framework — strategy-analysis
Reviewing a document someone else wrote — doc-critique

Where a loop runs it

Stage synthesise of the research loop

SKILL.md, the instructions the agent reads
Its page on the site
Related: brief-intake, decision-log, doc-critique, hypothesis-comparison, research-plan, strategy-analysis

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