synthesis.work

A shared practice for working with AI

Your work should outlive the chat window.

Keep the decisions, sources, and next steps with the work, so another session can pick it up. The synthesis work system brings together open methods and tools for doing this across writing, engineering, and other work.

AI to assist, augment, and amplify human capability, not replace people

Set up your systemRead the manifesto

Explore what’s included

An example handoff

Saved with the project

Planning a workshop

You choose what to teach and lead the session. AI helps sort participants’ questions and compare agenda options.

Decided
Leave more time for practice than presentation.
Checked
Room capacity and equipment against the venue’s booking details.
Still open
Confirm which materials the venue provides.

Next session

Check the venue’s reply, then finish the materials list.

01 / the rule

Complete, or visibly partial.

Setup should tell you what is installed, what you chose to leave out, and what is missing. A partial setup is legitimate when it is deliberate. A check that cannot run must never look like a pass.

02 / the system

More than a skill pack.

The full setup includes the public layers below. If your organization supplies configuration, it can be added to the same setup.

Included in full setup Included when configured
  1. 01

    Skills

    Portable synthesis methods, installed through each app's own plugin system.

    Included
  2. 02

    Session context

    SessionStart time, project, coordination, and lifecycle evidence.

    Included
  3. 03

    Hooks and gates

    Commit-boundary and pre-send controls running from stable local paths.

    Included
  4. 04

    Agent kernel

    One Git-tracked instruction source exposed to every supported app.

    Included
  5. 05

    Runtime engines

    Durable local engines and launchers under the synthesis state root.

    Included
  6. 06

    Coordination

    Session claims, messages, and handoffs on a shared local board.

    Included
  7. 07

    Doctors and conformance

    Health checks that distinguish defects from unverifiable state.

    Included
  8. 08

    Personal policy

    User-authored preferences, guard patterns, and routing policy.

    Included
  9. 09

    Organization

    Optional declarative organization configuration and knowledge access.

    When configured
  10. 10

    Knowledge bases

    Git-backed personal and optional organization knowledge repositories.

    Included
  11. 11

    Lifecycle

    Release channels, update notices at session start, and a doctor that compares installed files with the release.

    Included

03 / start

Install the complete public system.

One command sets up the whole system on a Mac. If the Mac lacks Apple's Command Line Tools, it installs them first. Other ways to install, including your app's own plugin commands, are below it.

Install on a Mac

Run this in Terminal. It installs the synthesis plugin in each of Claude Code, Codex and Muse that it finds, the runtime the plugin uses, and the synthesis command.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/synthesisengineering/synthesis-skills/stable/onboard.sh | sh

It needs git, python3 and at least one of Claude Code (the desktop app or the command line), Codex or Muse. Setup asks whether to turn on the commit check, and on a first install asks two questions for a starting configuration. Every step is safe to rerun, and running it again updates. Read the installer · What setup changes

After setup

Quit and reopen each app: a restart is what loads new skills and hooks. In Codex, approve the synthesis hooks with /hooks; in Muse, run muse plugins approve synthesis-skills. Then synthesis doctor checks every part.

Other ways to install

With Homebrew

The formula adds a launcher that runs the same setup.

brew install synthesisengineering/tap/synthesis && synthesis-onboard

Only the plugin, with your app's own commands

These install the skills and hooks, and the runtime arrives with the first session. They skip the rest of setup: Codex's settings, the commit check and the synthesis command.

# Claude Code
claude plugin marketplace add synthesisengineering/synthesis-skills@stable
claude plugin install synthesis-skills@synthesis-engineering

# Codex
codex plugin marketplace add synthesisengineering/synthesis-skills --ref stable
codex plugin add synthesis-skills@synthesis-engineering

Source and licensing. Provider data handling and costs depend on the app and model service you choose.

04 / where this leads

A system you can leave, and return to.

Native agent memory helps inside one product. Synthesis keeps the work itself in durable, versioned records that different tools and people can read. Your project remains yours.

Read the Synthesis ManifestoRead the public system source