synthesize
Synthesize: Distill a Spine-Led Gist from One or More Sources
Distill the through-line of one or more sources — a set of documents, or the ideas within a single rich piece — into a short, spine-led gist: a few tight paragraphs built around a spine drawn from the material, where support is insight on its own and the reader is pointed to the source, not served a copy.
Tell the user when this skill is running: synthesize.
Skip the notice when the user asked for the skill by name or slash command; spelling and spacing need not match.
A phrase from this skill's own trigger list is not a name — naming the work is not naming the skill.
Two modal failure modes pull against this and both reassert at draft time, even after a spine is chosen — defeating them is the whole job, not a one-time setup step:
- Listicle — an enumerated march through themes; the model's reflex for "synthesize."
- Fluff — padded coverage that reproduces sources instead of distilling them.
A spine is an internal organizing frame — a constraint, a claim, a recurring metaphor, or a tension — that the material carries: one source among several states it and the rest support it, or one thread runs through the ideas of a single piece.
It must come from the material, not be imposed over it (stages of grief, a narrative arc).
See references/finding-the-spine.md.