Synthetic customer discovery

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.

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
  examples/
    example-synthetic-run.md     # what a Route C output looks like