Desk research project digest

/desk-research-project-digest

The middle layer of a research project — the step between a pile of raw sources and a synthesis. It turns sources/ into a structured, queryable digest: a synthesis matrix plus analytic memos. This is the capability episodic /research never had a home for; a multi-week project needs a durable place to see what the corpus is actually saying.

When to invoke

Inside an existing project folder (one scaffolded by /desk-research-project-start), on phrasing like "digest the sources", "build the synthesis matrix", "cluster what I've gathered so far". The project should be in (or moving into) the digest phase.

Inputs and outputs

• Reads: sources/*.md — the raw layer (each file one source, with its optional reliability / credibility provenance axes).
• Writes: synthesis-matrix.md (the concept matrix) and memos.md (analytic memos). Bare-named inside the project folder.

The synthesis matrix — emergent, constructed columns

synthesis-matrix.md is a concept matrix (Webster & Watson): rows are sources, columns are concepts. The columns are constructed from the material — grounded-theory open coding — not chosen from a fixed pillar set. You read the sources, notice the dimensions they actually speak to, and let those become the columns; as new sources introduce a new dimension, you add a column and revisit earlier rows against it.

# Synthesis matrix — <topic>

| Source | <emergent concept A> | <emergent concept B> | <emergent concept C> |
|---|---|---|---|
| src-01 | <what it says on A> | — | <what it says on C> |
| src-02 | <…> | <…> | <…> |

Do not pre-set the columns. There is no fixed-pillar schema (no "performance / cost / security" template imposed before reading) — that is exactly the failure mode the emergent rule refuses. The columns are whatever the corpus is organised around, discovered by reading it. Revise the column set as the corpus grows; a matrix whose structure has stopped changing is the saturation signal /desk-research-project-check reads.

Analytic memos — where the hypothesis forms

memos.md holds the analytic memos: short written reasoning about what the matrix is showing — patterns across rows, tensions between sources, gaps. This is where the project's working hypothesis is formed and revised: a project that started with an empty working_hypothesis in overview.md forms one here as evidence accumulates; a project that started with a prior revises it here as the matrix contradicts or confirms it. There is no hard hypothesis gate — the claim is held loosely and rewritten as the corpus warrants. Record each revision with a dated memo so the reasoning trail is auditable.

Provenance

Sources carry the optional Admiralty reliability / credibility axes from /desk-research-project-start; use them to weight a source's contribution in the matrix and memos. They inform the analysis — the claim-level rail stays GRADE confidence + ≥3-source triangulation at synthesis time.

Reused skills in this phase

• /source-map populates sources/ (curates and grades candidate sources).
• /build-outline can seed the initial matrix columns from the question's sub-questions — a starting scaffold the emergent coding then overrides as the material dictates.
• /identify-perspectives supplies perspective columns for a contested topic (each camp a lens the matrix can carry).

What this skill is not

• Not a fixed-schema scorecard — columns are emergent, never pre-set.
• Not an engine — nothing scores saturation or advances phase; this skill writes Markdown the agent reasons over.
• Not the synthesis — it structures the corpus; /desk-research-project-synthesize reads this digest and writes the verdict and the brief.

Next

When the matrix and memos are populated, run /desk-research-project-check to read the saturation signal, and /desk-research-project-synthesize to emit the typed verdict and the governance brief. Phase advance is human-driven — this skill never moves the project past digest on its own.