| name | wiki-synthesize |
| description | Systematically discover synthesis opportunities across the Obsidian wiki — pairs or clusters of concepts that co-occur frequently across pages but have no synthesis page connecting them. Creates new synthesis/ pages that draw explicit cross-cutting conclusions. Use when the user says "synthesize my wiki", "find connections", "what concepts keep coming up together", "/wiki-synthesize", or after a large ingest when the vault has grown significantly.
|
Wiki Synthesize — First-Class Synthesis Discovery
You are scanning the wiki for concepts that co-occur across many pages but have no dedicated synthesis page connecting them. Your job is to surface these gaps and fill the most valuable ones with cross-cutting synthesis pages.
Before You Start
Writing profile: Before drafting or rewriting natural-language Markdown, read and apply the Writing Profile Resolution section in llm-wiki/SKILL.md. Framework schema, provenance, safety, and operation-specific requirements take precedence.
WRITING.md preferences apply only to newly drafted or rewritten natural-language Markdown; preserve source content and structured records.
- Resolve config — follow the Config Resolution Protocol in
llm-wiki/SKILL.md (inline @name override → walk up CWD for .env → global config → prompt setup). This gives OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH and OBSIDIAN_LINK_FORMAT (default: wikilink).
- Read
index.md to get the full page inventory.
- Read
hot.md if it exists — it surfaces recent activity and active threads that may already point to synthesis opportunities.
- Read
_meta/taxonomy.md to understand the tag vocabulary.
When writing internal links in synthesis pages, apply the link format from llm-wiki/SKILL.md (Link Format section) using the OBSIDIAN_LINK_FORMAT value.
Step 1: Build the Co-occurrence Map
Scan every non-special page in the vault (skip index.md, log.md, hot.md, _insights.md, _meta/*, _archives/*, _raw/*).
For each page, collect:
- All
[[wikilinks]] it contains (outgoing links)
- Its
tags frontmatter
- Its
category frontmatter
Build a co-occurrence matrix: for every pair of concept/entity pages (A, B), count how many other pages link to both A and B. This is their co-occurrence score.
You don't need to be exhaustive — aim for the top 20-30 pairs by co-occurrence score. Use Grep to find backlinks efficiently:
rg -l --glob '*.md' "\[\[ConceptA\]\]" "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH"
Run this for your top candidate concepts and intersect the result sets.
Step 2: Filter Out Already-Synthesized Pairs
Check the synthesis/ directory for existing pages. For each existing synthesis page:
- Read its
sources frontmatter or its body for [[wikilinks]]
- Mark those concept pairs as already covered
Remove covered pairs from your candidate list.
Step 3: Score and Rank Candidates
For each remaining candidate pair (or cluster of 3+), assign a synthesis value score:
| Signal | Points |
|---|
| Co-occurrence count ≥ 5 | +3 |
| Co-occurrence count 3-4 | +2 |
| Co-occurrence count 1-2 | +1 |
| Concepts are in different categories (cross-domain) | +2 |
| Concepts share tags but live in different folders | +1 |
One or both concepts are tagged as hubs in _insights.md | +1 |
| A synthesis would resolve a flagged contradiction | +2 |
Pick the top 5 candidates. If the user asked for a specific topic ("synthesize everything about observability"), filter candidates to that domain first.
Step 4: Draft Synthesis Pages
For each top candidate, create a page in synthesis/ using this template:
---
title: <Concept A> × <Concept B>
category: synthesis
tags: [<shared tags>, <domain tags>]
sources: [<all pages that link to both>]
created: TIMESTAMP
updated: TIMESTAMP
summary: "Cross-cutting synthesis of how <A> and <B> interact, with implications for <domain>."
provenance:
extracted: 0.2
inferred: 0.7
ambiguous: 0.1
base_confidence: <min(base_confidence of all input pages)>
lifecycle: draft
lifecycle_changed: TIMESTAMP_DATE
---
# <Concept A> × <Concept B>
## The Connection
*What makes these two concepts worth synthesizing together — the non-obvious relationship that pages about each individually don't capture.*
## Where They Co-occur
*The pages and contexts where both appear. What situations bring them together.*
## Cross-cutting Insight
*The conclusion that only becomes visible when you look at both together. This is the point of the page — the thing you couldn't see from either concept page alone.*
## Tensions and Trade-offs
*Where the two concepts pull in opposite directions. Unresolved contradictions. Cases where applying one undermines the other.*
## Strongest Objection
*The best skeptical reading of THIS page's cross-cutting insight — the case a sharp critic would make that the connection is spurious, overstated, or an artifact of how the sources were written. Follow it with a testable search query (e.g. `> test: does X actually hold when Y is controlled for?`), never an invented citation. A synthesis that can't name its own strongest objection hasn't earned its conclusion.*
## Open Questions
*What this synthesis surfaces that the wiki doesn't yet have an answer for. Good candidates for future research.*
## Related
- [[]]
- [[]]
- [[]]
Synthesis pages are mostly ^[inferred]. You are drawing connections across sources — that's synthesis by definition. Apply ^[inferred] to cross-cutting conclusions and ^[ambiguous] where sources disagree.
The title format is A × B — this signals to readers that it's a synthesis page, not a page about either concept alone.
Step 5: Back-link from Source Pages
For each synthesis page you created, add a link to it from the two (or more) concept pages it synthesizes. In the concept page, add to its ## Related section:
- [[Concept A × Concept B]] — synthesis
If the concept page has no ## Related section, add one at the bottom.
Step 6: Report Synthesis Opportunities Not Taken
After creating pages for the top 5, list the next 10 candidates in your output — pairs that scored well but you didn't write pages for. This gives the user visibility into what the wiki thinks is worth exploring without forcing every synthesis in one run.
Format:
Skipped (consider next time):
- [[Caching]] × [[Consistency]] — co-occurs in 4 pages, cross-domain
- [[Testing]] × [[Observability]] — co-occurs in 3 pages, shares tags
...
Step 7: Update Special Files
index.md — Add entries for all new synthesis pages.
log.md — Append:
- [TIMESTAMP] WIKI_SYNTHESIZE pages_scanned=N synthesis_created=M candidates_skipped=K
hot.md — Read $OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH/hot.md (create from the template in wiki-ingest if missing). Update Recent Activity with what was synthesized — e.g. "Synthesized 5 cross-cutting pages: Caching × Consistency, Testing × Observability, …". Update Active Threads with any open questions the synthesis surfaced. Update updated timestamp.
Quality Checklist
Tips
- A synthesis page that only summarizes its sources is useless. The value is the connection — the thing neither source page says explicitly.
- Don't synthesize for synthesis's sake. If two concepts just happen to appear together a lot without a real conceptual link, skip them.
- Three-way syntheses are powerful but rare. Only create them when three concepts form a genuine triangle of mutual influence — not just because all three appear in the same project page.
- Check
_insights.md first. The wiki-status skill may have already flagged synthesis candidates there — start with those before running the co-occurrence scan from scratch.
QMD Refresh After Vault Writes
QMD is a search index, not the source of truth. If $QMD_WIKI_COLLECTION is empty or unset, skip this step. Run it only after this skill has written or rewritten vault markdown. If QMD refresh fails, do not roll back the vault changes; report the QMD status separately.
Use $QMD_CLI if set; otherwise use qmd.
${QMD_CLI:-qmd} update
If the output says vectors are needed or embeddings may be stale, run:
${QMD_CLI:-qmd} embed
Verify the collection with either:
${QMD_CLI:-qmd} ls "$QMD_WIKI_COLLECTION"
or, when a specific page path is known:
${QMD_CLI:-qmd} get "qmd://$QMD_WIKI_COLLECTION/<page>.md" -l 5
Record one of:
QMD refreshed: update + embed + verifiedQMD refreshed: update only + verifiedQMD skipped: QMD_WIKI_COLLECTION unsetQMD skipped: qmd CLI unavailableQMD failed: <short error summary>
