synthesize

Science grounding: far transfer (Tempel & Frings 2024), generation effect (McCurdy et al. 2020), elaborative interrogation, desirable difficulty (Bjork & Bjork 2020).

<Use_When>

• User wants to understand what the vault collectively says about a concept
• User is writing a Thought note and wants to pressure-test an idea
• User is preparing a talk, essay, or decision and needs cross-domain ammunition
• User says "synthesize X", "what do I know about X", "connect ideas about X"
• User wants to find contradictions or gaps in their own thinking </Use_When>

<Do_Not_Use_When>

• User wants to process a single source note — use /process instead
• User wants spaced repetition review — use /recall instead
• User has a specific paper to analyze — use /paper instead
• Topic is too narrow to generate cross-domain connections (single paper, single event) </Do_Not_Use_When>

Stage 1: PARSE THE TOPIC

Extract the core concept(s) from the user's input. Identify:

• Primary term: the exact word(s) to search (e.g., "attention", "loss aversion")
• Synonyms / adjacent: related terms likely to appear in notes (e.g., "focus", "salience", "bias")
• Domain anchors: which domains likely hold relevant notes (ML, psychology, design, startup...)

If the topic is ambiguous, briefly clarify before searching (one question max).

Stage 2: PARALLEL SEARCH — run ALL of these simultaneously

MCP search (preferred):

search_notes(query="PRIMARY TERM", limit=30)
search_notes(query="SYNONYM 1", limit=15)
search_notes(query="SYNONYM 2", limit=15)

Grep fallback (if MCP unavailable):

Grep(pattern="PRIMARY TERM", path="notes/", glob="*.md", output_mode="files_with_matches")
Grep(pattern="#TAG-NAME", path="notes/", glob="*.md", output_mode="files_with_matches")
Grep(pattern="\[\[.*PRIMARY TERM.*\]\]", path="notes/", glob="*.md", output_mode="files_with_matches")