sethdford Information Synthesis
Synthesis ≠ summary. Summaries compress one source; synthesis integrates many into a new, more useful view—explicit about agreement, tension, and unknowns.
When to Use
- Literature reviews, competitive scans, incident timelines, policy comparisons, or any “many docs, one answer” request.
Workflow
Gather diverse sources (not only the ones that agree). Extract the core claims from each. Compare: note agreements, contradictions, and silence (what nobody covers). Pattern-find across sources for stable themes. Integrate into one narrative or decision frame. Weight sources by credibility and method (data vs opinion). Flag conflicts openly—don’t silently pick a winner. Deliver insight the user can act on, plus gaps where evidence is thin.
Examples
Example 1: Five postmortems mention “config drift”; synthesis proposes one control (golden image + drift check) and lists what past docs disagreed on (rollback vs forward-fix).
Example 2: Three vendors claim “best latency”; synthesis table shows different test setups, flags incomparable metrics, recommends a single benchmark harness before buying.