Module 3 of 5
AI-assisted collection
Extract themes without losing provenance.
AI is genuinely good at reading a long document and pulling out the parts that bear on your question. It is bad at remembering where anything came from unless you force the issue. Work one document at a time, and require every extracted point to carry the document, the page or section, and a short direct quotation.
Never let AI summarise across sources at this stage. The moment ten documents become one synthesis, the provenance is gone and you cannot get it back without redoing the work. Collect with citations attached; synthesise later, deliberately, yourself.
Takeaway
One document at a time, every point carrying its source and a quotation. Synthesise later, never during collection.