source-synthesis
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. Use 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".
Other ways to install
With the sibling skills it hands off to:
The whole pack it belongs to:
By hand, from a clone of the repo:
In Claude Code, with the research plugin installed, invoke it as:
Try it
A realistic prompt from the skill's acceptance evals:
Synthesise these three sources on whether Northwind should offer annual billing discounts. S1: Contoso pricing benchmark 2026 (40 pp.): p12 'median annual discount among 300 SaaS firms is 17%'; p15 'annual plans churn 40% less, though firms self-select annual buyers'. S2: Acme finance memo, 3 pp., Feb 2026: p2 'our 2025 annual-plan pilot lifted cash collected up front by $210k'; p3 'net revenue retention unchanged'. S3: transcript, Northwind sales lead, 22 min: 08:40 'customers ask for annual all the time'; 15:10 'the big deals want 25% off'. Question: what discount, if any, should we offer?
What a good result looks like
Example output
four sources on a four-day week · the skill's own worked example, source
Acme is thinking about moving our 14-person support team to a four-day week. Can you synthesise these four sources? I've pasted the relevant pages below.
- Northwind People Team, "Four-day week pilot: final report" (internal, Feb 2026, 18 pp.). Excerpts: p3 "The pilot ran for six months with 60 staff." p6 "Tickets closed per person fell 2% against the prior six months." p9 "Self-reported burnout fell from 41% to 22%." p11 "Sick days fell 30%." p12, Table 3: support team first-response time up 9%.
- Contoso Research, "Shorter Weeks 2026" (survey of 1,200 managers, Mar 2026, 32 pp.). p7 "63% of managers at firms trialling shorter weeks say productivity was maintained or improved." p14 "18% report coverage problems in customer-facing teams."
- Transcript of my interview with our support team lead, 12 Mar 2026, 41 min. 00:14:20 "Fridays the queue builds up, Monday is brutal." 00:22:05 "Honestly the team is happier." 00:31:40 "If we do it, I'd want people to take different days off."
- Fabrikam News, "Four-day week works, says survey" (Apr 2026). Paragraph 2 reports the Contoso survey's 63% figure.
First draft, checked
The first draft went through the checker before it was shown to the user:
python3 scripts/citations.py synthesis.md
# Citation check: synthesis-v1.md
Sources: 4 · Claims checked: 12 · Errors: 4 · Warnings: 1 · Result: FAIL
## Errors: citations that do not resolve (1)
- line 49: [S1:p3; S5:p2] — no source S5 in the list
## Errors: malformed citations (1)
- line 48: [S1, S3] — write one id per part, separated by ';', e.g. [S1:p4; S2:p7]
## Errors: uncited claims (2)
- line 33: "The usual fix is a staggered rota so the desk is covered five days a week."
- line 48: "- No source measures customer satisfaction scores, only response times [S1, S3]."
## Warnings: citations with no location (1)
- line 44: [S2] — add a page, section or timestamp
## Warnings: sources never cited (0)
None.
## Info: [outside] claims to check by hand (0)
None.
What each error meant:
- Line 33 was a sentence from memory ("The usual fix is a staggered rota…"). No source says it. It was cut; the team lead's suggestion at 00:31:40 already sits, cited, under "What the sources do not say", with the note that nothing tests it.
- Lines 48–49 had a malformed citation and a typo'd id (S5). Fixed to
[S1:p12; S3:00:14:20]and[S1:p3]. - Line 44 cited S2 with no page. Fixed to
[S2:p14].
After the fixes the checker reports:
Sources: 4 · Claims checked: 11 · Errors: 0 · Warnings: 0 · Result: PASS
S4 is cited once, and only to record that it repeats S2. That is deliberate: the register counts it with S2, so F1 rests on two lines of evidence, not three.
Output: the synthesis as delivered
Synthesis: four-day week for Acme's support team
Prepared 2026-04-20 · 4 sources (3 independent) · Question from the user
Question
Should Acme move its 14-person support team to a four-day week? Sub-questions: does output hold up, does wellbeing improve, and what happens to customer response times?
Bottom line
Output held roughly steady and burnout fell in the one controlled pilot [S1:p6; S1:p9], and a manager survey points the same way on output [S2:p7]. The clear cost is customer coverage: response times rose in the pilot's support team [S1:p12] and Acme's own team lead describes a Monday backlog [S3:00:14:20]. The evidence on output is moderate; on coverage it is limited but consistent.
Findings
F1. Output per person held roughly steady
In Northwind's six-month pilot of 60 staff, tickets closed per person fell 2% against the prior six months [S1:p6]. In the Contoso survey, 63% of managers at firms trialling shorter weeks said productivity was maintained or improved [S2:p7].
Agreement: S1 and S2 agree. S4 reports S2's survey and is counted with it [S4:para 2]. Strength: moderate. Criteria: one primary pilot with a before-and-after baseline, plus one self-reported survey.
F2. Burnout and sick days fell
Self-reported burnout fell from 41% to 22% over the pilot [S1:p9], and sick days fell 30% [S1:p11]. Acme's team lead says the team is happier on the trial schedule [S3:00:22:05].
Agreement: S1 and S3 agree; no source disagrees. Strength: moderate. Criteria: primary data, but burnout is self-reported and S3 is one person's view.
F3. Customer response times got worse in support roles
First-response time in the pilot's support team rose 9% [S1:p12, Table 3]. Of managers surveyed, 18% reported coverage problems in customer-facing teams [S2:p14]. The team lead says the queue builds up on Fridays and Mondays are hard [S3:00:14:20].
Agreement: S1, S2 and S3 agree. Strength: limited. Criteria: one support team in the pilot, a minority finding in a self-reported survey, and one interview.
Agreement and disagreement
| Finding | Agree | Disagree | Likely reason for the split | Strength |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F1 output | S1, S2 | none | — [S1:p6; S2:p7] | moderate |
| F2 wellbeing | S1, S3 | none | — [S1:p9; S3:00:22:05] | moderate |
| F3 coverage | S1, S2, S3 | none | the survey's 18% covers all customer-facing teams, not only support [S2:p14] | limited |
Gaps
- No source measures customer satisfaction scores, only response times [S1:p12; S3:00:14:20].
- No source follows a team beyond six months [S1:p3].
What the sources do not say
- The pilot reports output held steady; it doesn't say whether ticket complexity changed over the period [S1:p6].
- The team lead suggests staggered days off [S3:00:31:40]; no source tests whether a staggered rota fixes the coverage gap.
Outside the sources
- None. <!-- no-cite -->
Sources
- S1: Northwind People Team, "Four-day week pilot: final report", internal report, Feb 2026, 18 pp. Before-and-after, 60 staff, six months.
- S2: Contoso Research, "Shorter Weeks 2026", industry survey, Mar 2026, 32 pp. 1,200 managers, self-reported.
- S3: Interview transcript, Acme support team lead, 12 Mar 2026, 41 min.
- S4: Fabrikam News, "Four-day week works, says survey", news article, Apr 2026. Reports S2's survey; counted with S2.
How it's checked
Measured against plain Claude Code (2026-10-23): it met 74% of its checks, against 67% without it, and a blind judge preferred it. How skills are checked
54 assertions across 7 acceptance evals, and 8 trigger queries. Every skill's checks
What the output must do
When it should and shouldn't activate
Should activate:
- 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
Should leave to another skill:
- 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
- Here are the facts we have; which of these three explanations for the churn spike holds up best?
Hands off to
- hypothesis-comparison — when the findings point to several rival explanations for the same observation. Rank the explanations by how much of the cited evidence contradicts each.
Related skills
brief-intake, decision-log, doc-critique, research-plan, strategy-analysis
Source
SKILL.md · the whole folder on GitHub.