Individual skill
synthetic-user-research
Use AI personas for early-stage research signal — with hard guardrails on what synthetic methods can and cannot validate. Use when asked to run synthetic user testing, simulate user reactions with AI personas, pretest a survey or message before fielding it, or decide whether synthetic research is appropriate at all. Produces a fit verdict for the question at hand, a persona-panel design grounded in real data, the findings labelled as synthetic throughout, and the follow-up plan with real humans. Never a substitute for discovery interviews — see discovery-interview-guide and user-research-synthesis for the real thing.
skills/synthetic-user-research/SKILL.md
Source commit f7c90bc09ee05dc25cf257bdb1826f2c2552c2cb
What was checked
- Matches the observed repository HEAD
- Yes
- Scanner rules are current
- Yes
- Repository scan complete
- No
- Skill scan complete
- No
- Observed behavior
- Network or broad shell
- Last checked
- Nov 9, 2026
These are observations at the recorded commit, not a guarantee of safety. Review the source before running it.
Install this skill
Choose an agent in your Stack or copy a command below. Commands fetch the pinned commit and copy only this skill directory. Existing destinations are refused. Copying a command does not install anything.
An install command is unavailable: current rules, complete repository and skill scans, an eligible behavior level and a permitted license are required.
Repository context
- Repository stars (not skill ratings)
- 1,539
- Repository last updated
- Nov 10, 2026
- License
- MIT
Observed agent integration: No specific integration evidence. Standard SKILL.md installation does not imply verified compatibility.
- product-management Repository topic
- productivity Repository topic
- skills Repository topic
- claude-skills Repository topic
- agent-skills Repository topic
- chatgpt Repository topic
- claude-code Repository topic
- cursor Repository topic
- gemini Repository topic
- prompt-engineering Repository topic
- design Derived category
- data Derived category
- testing Derived category
- research Derived category
Files and excerpt
File metadata and permitted, redacted excerpts come from the recorded scan. Source links are pinned to that commit.
Browse files
SKILL.mdcore · 6,666 bytes
Read excerpt
# Synthetic User Research Skill
AI personas are the most misused research tool of the decade — and genuinely useful inside a narrow lane. The difference is the question you ask them. Synthetic panels can catch comprehension failures, confusing flows, and survey defects *before you spend real participants on them*; they cannot tell you what people will pay for, feel, or do. This skill enforces the lane, then runs the method properly.
## What This Skill Produces
- A **fit verdict**: is this question answerable synthetically at all? (Sometimes the deliverable is "no — here's the human study instead")
- A **persona-panel design** grounded in real data you already have, with provenance per persona
- **Findings, labelled synthetic throughout**, with confidence calibrated to the method's floor
- The **human follow-up plan** — what the synthetic pass earned you the right to test properly
## The Lane (checked before anything runs)
**Synthetic methods CAN usefully probe** — because the answer lives in the artifact, not in human hearts: