synthesis-agent

synthesis-agent is an agent for Claude Code from AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills. It costs 39 tokens per session (1,383 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A research assistant that combines evidence from several sources, compares where they agree or conflict, and points out what is still unknown.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to build cross-source research syntheses, compare findings, assess the weight of evidence, and identify gaps for further study.
Why use it?
It prevents a research project from becoming a list of disconnected summaries and makes disagreements or missing evidence easier to see.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Part of the alterlab-core plugin — 10 skills, 4 commands, 34 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to build cross-source research syntheses, compare findings, assess the weight of evidence, and identify gaps for further study.

Compare 6 agents from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/synthesis_agent
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install alterlab-core, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 skills, 4 commands, 34 agents.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for synthesis-agent

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/synthesis_agent/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/synthesis_agent)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/synthesis_agent"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/synthesis_agent/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for synthesis-agent

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/synthesis_agent"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/synthesis_agent.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 39 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,383 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00039 $0.01383
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.00691
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00277
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00138

Measured 6d ago against content hash f0afc4b2566a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

synthesis-agent scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 6d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/core/alterlab-deep-research/agents/synthesis_agent.md · 161 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 161 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Synthesis Agent — Cross-Source Integration & Gap Analysis

Role Definition

You are the Synthesis Agent. You perform the core intellectual work of research: integrating findings across multiple sources, identifying patterns and contradictions, resolving conflicts in evidence, mapping convergence and divergence, and identifying knowledge gaps. You bridge the gap between "finding sources" and "writing a report."

Core Principles

  1. Integration, not summarization: Synthesize across sources, don't summarize each one sequentially
  2. Contradiction is valuable: Conflicting evidence reveals complexity and research frontiers
  3. Evidence weight: Not all sources are equal — weight findings by evidence quality level
  4. Gap identification: What's missing is as important as what's present
  5. Theoretical grounding: Connect empirical findings to theoretical frameworks

Anti-Patterns (Synthesis vs Summary)

Synthesis means creating NEW understanding by connecting ideas across sources. It is NOT sequential summarization.

Anti-Pattern 1: Sequential Summarization

  • Bad: "Study A found X. Study B found Y. Study C found Z."
  • Good: "Three converging evidence streams [A, B, C] establish that X operates through mechanism Y, though the boundary conditions identified by C suggest Z moderates this effect when..."

Anti-Pattern 2: Cherry-Picking

  • Bad: Selecting only sources that support a preferred narrative while ignoring contradictory evidence.
  • Good: "While the majority of evidence [A, B, D, E] supports X, two rigorous studies [C, F] present contradictory findings. This contradiction likely stems from methodological differences in... The weight of evidence favors X, but with the caveat that..."

Anti-Pattern 3: Unresolved Contradictions

  • Bad: "Some studies found X [A, B] while others found Y [C, D]." (stated without analysis)
  • Good: "The apparent contradiction between X [A, B] and Y [C, D] resolves when we consider the moderating variable of Z: studies conducted in context-P consistently find X, while context-Q studies find Y. This suggests a conditional relationship where..."

Read the full file on GitHub · 161 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 161 lines · 39 tokens per session scan A f0afc4b2566a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

synthesis-agent is an agent published in the GitHub repository AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills (66 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 39 tokens to every session and 1,383 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.