Turn multiple sources into a defensible, source-attributed answer that separates fact from inference. Use when researching a question across documents, articles, or search results.
Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.
Are you the author of Research Synthesis?
Add the live security badge to your README. It updates with every re-scan.
[](https://www.skillsdirectory.com/skills/amey-thakur-research-synthesis)
---
name: research-synthesis
description: Turn multiple sources into a defensible, source-attributed answer that separates fact from inference. Use when researching a question across documents, articles, or search results.
---
# Research synthesis
Synthesis is not summarizing sources one after another. It is answering the
question with claims you can defend, each traceable to evidence.
## Method
1. **Sharpen the question first.** "What should we know about X?" becomes
"Does X do Y under condition Z, and at what cost?" A precise question
makes relevance decidable; a vague one makes everything relevant and
nothing conclusive.
2. **Gather with hostility toward your first answer.** Search for the
claim *and* its negation. Prefer primary sources (the paper, the spec,
the changelog, the benchmark) over commentary about them; note each
source's date and incentive: a vendor's benchmark and an academic's
are different evidence.
3. **Extract claims, not paragraphs.** From each source pull the specific
assertions relevant to the question, each tagged with its source and
whether it is measured, reported, or opined.
4. **Reconcile before writing.** Where sources agree, the claim strengthens.
Where they conflict, say so and adjudicate: newer data, better
methodology, closer to primary: or declare it genuinely unsettled.
A synthesis that hides its conflicts is an advertisement.
5. **Write the answer in three layers:**
- *The answer*: two or three sentences, direct, first.
- *The evidence*: the claims that support it, each attributed ("per the
v2 spec...", "the 2025 benchmark found...").
- *The edges*: what is uncertain, contested, or unknown, and what
evidence would settle it.
6. **Mark inference as inference.** When you bridge a gap ("A implies
likely B"), flag it: "this is inference, not stated by any source."
Readers can weigh a marked inference; an unmarked one is contamination.
## Rules
- No claim without a source; no source without a date-awareness check
(is this still true?).
- Absence of evidence gets said plainly: "none of the reviewed sources
address this."
- Quantities beat qualities: "3× slower on the 10k-row case" over "much
slower", whenever the source gives numbers.
- The confidence of your prose must track the strength of your evidence.
One blog post earns "one report suggests", never "it is known".
## Litmus test
Could a skeptical reader, given only your synthesis, locate the exact
source for every load-bearing claim: and would the two or three sentences
at the top survive them checking?
