/research-synthesis

Role: Principal Investigator (synthesis) Pipeline position: mid-chain

Reconciles the collected sources into a state-of-the-art map + literature matrix and states the explicit research gap the work addresses. Every load-bearing claim is adversarially verified against two or more independent sources, refute-by-default.

Canonical invocation

/research-synthesis

With arguments:

/research-synthesis [path/to/research-suite/]

Inputs

_inputs/source-ledger.md (the ranked, screened source index) plus the per-source extractions under sources/.

Outputs

_inputs/synthesis.md — the SOTA map, the literature matrix, the contested-findings ledger, and the explicit one-sentence gap statement.

Downstream

/research-proposal (downstream consumer)

Workflow phases

The command follows the standard /research pipeline workflow:

1. Load context — Read the source ledger and the per-source extractions.
2. Verify the Sequence Gate — Confirm the source ledger exists; otherwise halt with Blocked: run /research-sources first.
3. Synthesize — Build the SOTA map + literature matrix; reconcile agreements and contradictions; state the explicit gap.
4. Adversarially verify — Every load-bearing claim is refuted-by-default against two or more independent sources.
5. Update the handoff manifest — Record the synthesis path and the contested-claims ledger.
6. Emit the synthesis — _inputs/synthesis.md.

Rigor floor

Before the gap statement is finalized, the synthesis reconciles its terminology, findings, and recommendations against related sibling corpora (cross-corpus coherence); a conflict is recorded in the contested-findings ledger, never silently harmonized. The gap must resolve to a distinct, parsimonious contribution — not one already closed by a corroborated claim, and not decomposable into overlapping non-distinct elements.

Failure modes

Examples

# Synthesize the collected sources into a SOTA map + gap
/research-synthesis path/to/research-suite/

Cross-references

• Pipeline overview
• Commands reference