kdykes Synthetic Customer Discovery
End-to-end customer discovery with the methodological craft of a professional research shop, plus a synthetic-interview engine that runs on hand-built, grounded personas instead of a one-line profile string.
Design stance
- Synthetic output is a hypothesis, never a verdict. Every synthetic run is explicitly framed as a hypothesis generator. The required next step is validation against real participants. This is the documented mitigation for persona collapse, the failure mode where an LLM asked to play "a customer" flattens to the average internet idea of one.
- Persona depth does the work. Personas are structured artifacts grounded in specific lived episodes from real people the user has access to (themselves, customers, support tickets, sales calls), not demographic strings.
- Local and transparent. Interviews run inside the conversation against a readable persona file. No paid black-box backend. The user can see, version, and correct every persona.
Routing
| Intent | Route |
|---|---|
| Plan a study, screener, or interview guide | Route A: Plan |
| Build or refine a persona | Route B: Persona |
| Run synthetic interviews against personas | Route C: Simulate |
| Have transcripts (synthetic or real), need a report | Route D: Synthesize |
If the user's intent is ambiguous, ask one clarifying question.
JTBD lens (cross-cutting, not a route). When the question is why someone would switch to
the product, not just what they think of it, lay the Jobs-to-be-Done lens over whichever route
you're in: references/jtbd.md. It writes job statements, maps the Four Forces of Progress
straight from the persona file, adds switch-interview prompts to the guide, and frames
opportunities as jobs/outcomes. Same honesty rule applies: a job or forces map from synthetic
runs is a hypothesis, never a finding.
Route A: Plan
Create a research plan, screening questionnaire, interview guide, and a recruitment and
incentives plan.
Do: Follow references/planner.md. Incentive design is mandatory (Phase 3). Use a neutral
incentive, never free or early product access, for discovery.
Route B: Persona
Build a new persona or refine an existing one.
Do: Follow references/persona-builder.md. Never hand the user the blank template;
interview them about a real person (or extract from their raw material: transcripts, tickets,
notes) and write the file for them, marking everything inferred with [ASSUMED: confirm].
personas/_TEMPLATE.md defines the structure; personas/example-mara-freelance-designer.md
shows the level of specificity required (it is fictional; real personas must not be).
Route C: Simulate
Run synthetic interviews: embody one or more personas and answer an interview guide in
character.
Do: Follow run-synthetic-interview.md.
Route D: Synthesize
Turn transcripts into an evidence-backed report (themes, findings, opportunities).
Do: Follow references/synthesis.md. Hard rule: a theme supported only by synthetic
transcripts is a hypothesis, never a finding.
Where artifacts live
The skill is methodology only. Write study artifacts into the user's project, not into the skill directory. Suggested layout:
research/
plan/ # Route A outputs: plan, screener, guide
personas/ # Route B outputs: one file per persona
synthetic-runs/ # Route C outputs: transcript + fidelity note, dated
interviews/ # real-participant transcripts and notes (highest-grounding source)
findings/ # Route D outputs: synthesis reports
If the user already has a research directory convention, follow theirs.
Files
synthetic-customer-discovery/
SKILL.md # this file
run-synthetic-interview.md # Route C, the persona interview runner
personas/
_TEMPLATE.md # persona structure (the core of the method)
example-mara-freelance-designer.md # fictional worked example
references/
planner.md # Route A: plan, screener, guide, recruitment, incentives
persona-builder.md # Route B: guided persona creation (interview / extract / draft)
synthesis.md # Route D: transcripts to evidence-backed report
jtbd.md # Cross-cutting: Jobs-to-be-Done lens (job statements, Four Forces, outcomes)
examples/
example-synthetic-run.md # what a Route C output looks like