| name | competitive-quadrant |
| description | Write a two-axis competitive-quadrant report — Completeness of Vision x Ability to Execute, four quadrants (Leaders / Challengers / Visionaries / Niche Players), per-vendor Strengths/Cautions, and a required Mermaid quadrant figure. Use when the deliverable ranks vendors or offerings in a defined market on two evaluation axes and places each into one quadrant. Anti-trigger; for a narrative survey of a market's size, segments, and trends with no forced vendor placement use market-research-report, not this genre. |
| argument-hint | <the market and vendors to place on the competitive quadrant> |
competitive-quadrant
Produces a two-axis competitive-quadrant report: a practitioner deliverable
that scores every included vendor or offering in a defined market on two
evaluation axes — Completeness of Vision (x) and Ability to Execute
(y) — and places each into exactly one of four quadrants. Its center of
gravity is the quadrant placement, backed by explicit inclusion criteria,
per-axis scoring, and a per-vendor Strengths/Cautions pair. It captures
declarative comparative-judgment knowledge, not a time-bound event or a
step-by-step procedure.
This genre reproduces a generic two-axis competitive-analysis structure.
It is not a Gartner Magic Quadrant and must never claim to be one — see
Rules.
Pattern (industry: two-axis competitive-quadrant report)
- Market Definition / Inclusion Criteria — the market under evaluation and
the explicit, stated criteria a vendor must meet to be included (and what
excludes one). No vendor appears without satisfying the inclusion criteria.
- Two-axis evaluation — the evaluation framework: Completeness of
Vision (x-axis) and Ability to Execute (y-axis). State the
sub-criteria rolled into each axis and how each vendor is scored against
them, every score traced to a cited source.
- Vendor profiles — one profile per included vendor, each with an
explicit Strengths list and a Cautions list, every point
source-attributed.
- Quadrant placement — the four quadrants — Leaders, Challengers,
Visionaries, Niche Players — with each vendor assigned to exactly
one, justified by its position on the two axes. A two-axis quadrant figure
is required here, rendered as a Mermaid
quadrantChart (see Rules).
- Context & Market Overview — the market forces, adjacent trends, and
conditions that frame the placements and would shift them.
- Methodology — how vendors were scored, how evidence was gathered and
verified, and the limits and as-of date of the assessment.
Rules that keep it a competitive-quadrant report
- Trademark / not-Gartner caveat (load-bearing). "Magic Quadrant" is a
Gartner trademark and a proprietary methodology. This genre reproduces only
a generic two-axis competitive-analysis structure (Completeness of Vision x
Ability to Execute, four quadrants). It MUST NOT claim to be a Gartner
Magic Quadrant, use the "Magic Quadrant" trademark as a conformance or
branding claim, or imply Gartner endorsement or methodology. State the
caveat explicitly in every report this genre produces.
- The quadrant figure is mandatory and is always Mermaid. Render the
two-axis placement as a fenced
mermaid quadrantChart block — never ASCII
art, an image link, or Graphviz/DOT. If the underlying data cannot support a
rendered figure, say so in prose; a required figure is never silently
omitted. Plain tabular matter (e.g. the scoring rubric) stays a Markdown
table.
- State inclusion criteria before placing any vendor; an included vendor that
does not meet the stated criteria is a defect.
- Every axis score, Strength, and Caution traces to a cited source; no orphan
facts and no uncited placements.
- Assign each vendor to exactly one quadrant and justify it from its two-axis
position; never assert a quadrant without the underlying scores.
- Annotate contested or preliminary evidence with an explicit uncertainty
qualifier rather than hiding it; exclude only evidence that has been
affirmatively discredited.
- Exhaustive coverage: place every vendor that meets the inclusion
criteria; a silently dropped vendor is a defect.
Anti-triggers — do not use this genre for
- A narrative survey of a market's size, segments, growth, and trends with
no forced two-axis placement of named vendors — that is
market-research-report: broader in scope, descriptive rather than
comparative, and it does not require every entrant to land in exactly one
of four quadrants.
- A single evaluation with a free-form comparison table and no fixed
two-axis quadrant shape — that is
engineering: its Trade-offs table maps
options against decision drivers, but it never forces a Completeness-of-
Vision-by-Ability-to-Execute placement.
- An informal, one-design narrative weighing alternatives before building
something — that is
google-design-doc, not a vendor-comparison genre.
MIF frontmatter
type: semantic — a competitive-quadrant report is declarative comparative-
judgment knowledge, not a time-bound event or a how-to. Climb to L2 with
namespace (competitive-quadrant/<area>), modified, title, and tags
when the review context supplies them. Set entity.entity_type to
competitive-quadrant-report. Gate every output with mif-validate at its
target level; the floor is --level 1.
Why machine-readable — the point of MIF here
| Question an agent asks | Answered by (frontmatter) |
|---|
| Is this placement still current? | temporal.validFrom / ttl |
| Where did each vendor score come from; can I trust it? | provenance (W3C-PROV) + citations[] |
| What does this placement relate to or get superseded by? | typed relationships[] (relates-to, supersedes) |
| Which vendor claims were verified vs. asserted? | citations[] tied to each Strength/Caution and axis score |
The same document still reads as a human competitive-quadrant report and
projects losslessly to JSON-LD and back — one artifact, two readers.
The L1 -> L3 climb (two exemplars)
templates/good-l1.md — L1 floor: id, type, created + body. A
complete, valid report with the required Mermaid quadrant figure, but opaque
to a machine consumer.templates/good.md — L3 (highest this genre supports): adds
namespace, modified, temporal validity, W3C-PROV provenance,
citations[] tied to each vendor's Strengths/Cautions and axis scores, and a
typed relationships[] graph (e.g. relates-to a related market-research
report). Validate with mif-validate --level 3.
Author at the highest level the drafting context supports (grade down
rather than fabricate). templates/bad.md shows the antipattern: a report that
places vendors into quadrants with no quadrant figure at all — the single most
load-bearing required element this genre exists to demand.
