Technical Synthesis

Structural synthesis is the work: finding the shape of the eventual document, surfacing the points only the synthesizer can produce, noticing where the source has gaps that need research or reasoning the source doesn't contain. Drafting is easy once the structure is right.

The skill is modular. A core staged process and a set of standards apply universally; pluggable form (structural conventions for the deliverable) and tone (register and voice) layer on top. Defaults: audit form + expert tone.

When to use

Source material is rich in detail but low in form, and output structure matters as much as content. Concrete fits:

• Technical audits for a paying client or internal stakeholder
• Codebase docs synthesized from a repo and reading sessions
• Research-synthesis articles (paper + dataset + code → publishable explanation)
• Decision docs and ADRs grounded in scattered investigation
• Post-mortems pulled from incident logs and interviews
• Position papers drawing together field evidence

Skip for: editing an existing draft (use prose-editor or writing-prose); source-light creative writing; output under ~500 words where staging is overkill.