Synthesis

Synthesis is the canvas's way of telling you "I think I see a thread". When you've built up enough notes across enough types, a candidate thesis card appears above the canvas. You either keep it (solidify) or throw it away (dismiss).

This is what makes Brainstorm different from a sticky-note board. You're not just laying out thoughts — the canvas reads what you've written and pitches a synthesis when one is plausibly there.

When synthesis fires

The canvas evaluates synthesis automatically as you add notes. It tries when:

• You have 5 or more enriched notes (enrichment finished, type assigned)
• The notes span at least 2 distinct types (e.g., a mix of ideas + decisions, claims + blockers)
• A cooldown window has passed since the last attempt (~5 minutes by default)

If those conditions are met, the AI looks at your notes and either proposes a thesis or stays quiet. You'll never see a forced synthesis — quiet is a valid result.

You can bypass the cooldown manually with Cmd+K → Generate synthesis now.

The candidate card

A candidate thesis appears above the canvas as a card with a dashed gold border. It contains the proposed thesis text, an annotation explaining the reasoning, and two buttons:

• Solidify — keep the thesis. It's added to the canvas as a permanent note with a gold dot. The AI also creates extends connections from the thesis back to the source notes that fed it.
• Dismiss — throw the candidate away. No record is kept. The cooldown resets, and the next eligible synthesis can fire after ~5 minutes (or via Cmd+K).

You can solidify or dismiss multiple candidates over the life of a brainstorm. They accumulate as gold-dotted notes on the canvas as the thinking matures.

What "solidified" looks like

A solidified thesis is a regular note with type thesis, distinguished by a gold dot. It behaves like any other note in most ways — you can hover, see its connections, dim unrelated notes — but you can't drag it to a different type column in Kanban view (thesis is system-only).

The extends connections from the thesis to its sources are first-class connections. Hovering the thesis dims everything except the source notes; hovering a source note that fed a thesis dims everything except that thesis.

When to use synthesis

Synthesis is most useful when:

• You've spent a session dumping 10–30 notes on a problem and want to step back
• You've written a mix of decisions, blockers, and ideas and want a synthesis that ties them together
• You're early in a project and trying to find the underlying frame

It's least useful when:

• The canvas has just a few notes (the AI doesn't have enough material)
• All your notes are the same type (synthesis prefers cross-type structure)
• You're using Brainstorm as a pure note-taking surface and don't want any AI interpretation

If you don't want syntheses, just Dismiss any candidate that appears. The canvas doesn't punish dismissal — it'll just keep trying when conditions are met.

Force a synthesis with Cmd+K

Open the command palette with Cmd/Ctrl+K and pick Generate synthesis now. This bypasses the cooldown but still respects the 5-note / 2-type minimums. If those aren't met, you'll see a toast explaining why.