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.
▸The research question — runs through the lane check first — verdict before method
▸Real data to ground personas — interview notes, support tickets, reviews, analytics segments. *No real data → no panel*: ungrounded personas are the model's stereotypes wearing name tags
▸The artifact under test — the copy, flow, survey, IA
▸What decision this feeds — and its stakes (higher stakes shrink the lane)
✅ The bar it holds itself to
Every skill in this library self-verifies — these are this skill's own quality checks, straight from its definition.
✓The lane check ran first, and out-of-lane questions were refused with the alternative named
✓Every persona cites the real data it's built from — no data, no persona
✓The panel includes hostile/low-attention profiles
✓No finding reports simulated emotion, intent, or willingness to pay
✓SYNTHETIC labelling survives copy-paste (it's in the findings, not just the header)
✓The human follow-up plan exists — this method ends in better questions, never in validation
⚠️ What it refuses to do
Do not run synthetic "validation" for launch or investment decisions — that's laundering a model's agreeableness into evidence
Do not build personas from vibes or market-report archetypes — stereotypes in, stereotypes out
Do not ask personas how they *feel* or what they'd *pay* — the fluent answer is the false one
Do not report synthetic findings in the same register as real research — a stakeholder who can't tell the difference wasn't told loudly enough
Do not let a synthetic pass replace the discovery interview it was supposed to prepare — the lane is *before* human research, never instead of it
Install
npx pm-claude-skills add --agent claude # or codex · cursor · gemini · hermes
# or one-line MCP (every skill, any client):
claude mcp add pm-skills -- npx -y pm-claude-skills-mcp