run-swot

name

run-swot

description

Use when a strategist needs a structured situation synthesis before committing to a strategic direction. Triggers on "run a SWOT", "I need to understand our position", "situation synthesis before setting strategy", "what are our strengths and weaknesses", "map out opportunities and threats". Produces a committed SWOT artifact. Do NOT use as a substitute for market data — SWOT organizes what you know; it does not generate evidence you don't have.

Skill: run-swot

Produces a SWOT analysis — an inside-out / outside-in situation map that organizes Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats before the strategy direction is set. Uses the SWOT framework; see references/agentbundle-layout.md for artifact path resolution.

When to invoke

1. A defined scope exists — organization, product line, or market entry; SWOT without a scope boundary produces noise.
2. You are upstream of a strategic decision — not already mid-execution; SWOT informs strategy, it does not evaluate it.
3. No current SWOT exists for this scope — if one exists, amend it rather than starting fresh.

Procedure

1. Elicit and confirm scope. Name the entity (org, product, market entry), the time horizon, and the competitive reference point. Narrow to one scope; a SWOT that tries to cover everything covers nothing.
2. Author Strengths. List internal capabilities, assets, and advantages the entity already possesses and that a competitor would find difficult to replicate quickly. Elicit at least three; push for specificity over generality.
3. Author Weaknesses. List internal gaps, resource constraints, process failures, or capability absences that reduce competitive effectiveness. Be direct — a softened weakness list defeats the purpose.
4. Author Opportunities. List external conditions, market trends, regulatory changes, or competitor missteps that the entity could exploit. Name the evidence or source for each (PESTLE output, competitor analysis, stakeholder research). Reference the PESTLE or Porter's Five Forces artifacts if available in docs/product/shaping/.
5. Author Threats. List external risks — competitive moves, macro shifts, regulatory tightening, substitute emergence — that could erode position if unaddressed. Assign a rough time horizon (near-term / medium-term) to each.
6. Synthesize strategic implications. Derive SO (Strength–Opportunity) pairs (how to use strengths to capture opportunities), ST (Strength–Threat) pairs (how to use strengths to defend against threats), WO (Weakness–Opportunity) pairs (how to close weaknesses to capture opportunities), and WT (Weakness–Threat) pairs (risks that compound if unaddressed). Name at least one pair per quadrant.
7. Resolve the artifact path following the config-driven, two-branch elicitation procedure in references/agentbundle-layout.md (repo-scope first, user-scope second; when neither resolves, two-branch elicitation runs — never a silent default). Surface the resolved path, then commit swot-analysis.md with frontmatter type: swot-analysis.

Anti-patterns

• SWOT as a consensus ritual. A SWOT that says only what the room already agrees on is a performance, not analysis. Push the Weaknesses and Threats sections until they are uncomfortable.
• Opportunities without evidence. Every Opportunity cell should name its source — a macro trend, a research finding, a competitive gap. "There is an opportunity for AI" is not an Opportunity entry.
• Treating SWOT as a decision. SWOT maps the situation; frame-intent or run-okr-cascade turns it into a direction.