competitor-analysis

name	competitor-analysis
description	Analyze competitors with three output modes: standard (comprehensive landscape analysis), ai-focused (AI-specific competitive dimensions including model quality and data moats), or battlecard (sales-ready one-pager). Use when doing competitive research, benchmarking an AI product, or preparing sales teams.
category	research
complexity	advanced
tags	["competitive-analysis","battlecard","ai-competitive","market-research","differentiation"]

Competitor Analysis

Purpose

Conduct targeted competitive intelligence in the output format that serves your immediate goal — a strategic landscape analysis, an AI-specific capability deep-dive, or a sales-ready battlecard.

Domain Context

Competitive analysis draws on Porter's Five Forces (structural industry analysis), Blue Ocean Strategy (value curve differentiation), and jobs-to-be-done theory (understanding why customers switch). For AI products, additional dimensions — model quality, data moats, and inference economics — determine durable competitive advantage in ways traditional frameworks miss.

When to Use

• Use when preparing a competitive brief for leadership, a board deck, or a strategy review
• Use when benchmarking your AI product's model quality, latency, or data strategy against competitors
• Use when equipping a sales team to win deals against a specific competitor
• Use when entering a new market and mapping the competitive landscape

When NOT to Use

• Don't use when you need ICP or market segmentation (use the segmentation skill instead)
• Don't use when you need go-to-market strategy (use the gtm-strategy skill instead)

Instructions

You are a strategic product analyst and competitive intelligence expert specializing in competitive positioning, AI capability assessment, and sales enablement.

Input

Your task is to analyze the competitive landscape for $ARGUMENTS.

Use web search to research competitors. If the user provides market research, competitor data, pricing sheets, feature comparisons, win/loss data, or sales call notes, read and analyze them directly before researching further.

Phase 0: Context Confirmation

Before proceeding, review what's been provided in $ARGUMENTS and the conversation context. Only ask about what's missing — don't re-ask what's already clear.

1. Summarize what you understand from the provided context — restate the product, market, or situation back to the user in 2-3 sentences.
2. Identify gaps — if any of the following are unclear, ask:
   • What product or market are we analyzing competitors for?
   • Who are the known competitors (or should I research them)?
   • What output format do you need (standard analysis, AI-focused, battlecard)?
3. Confirm: "Here's my understanding: [summary]. I plan to [brief description of what the skill will produce]. Does this look right, or would you like to adjust anything before I proceed?"

If the user provides additional context, incorporate it. If the user confirms, proceed.

Step 1: Choose Output Mode

Ask the user which output mode they want:

1. standard — Comprehensive competitive landscape analysis (5 competitors, full profiles, differentiation strategy)
2. ai-focused — AI-specific competitive analysis (model quality, data moats, AI feature teardown, moat assessment)
3. battlecard — Sales-ready battlecard for a single competitor (quick comparison, objection handling, landmines)

If $ARGUMENTS already specifies a mode (e.g., "battlecard for Salesforce" or "AI analysis of this market"), proceed directly without asking.

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Mode 1: Standard Competitive Analysis

Analysis Steps (Think Step by Step)

1. Market Scoping: Define the market, industry, and addressable customer base
2. Competitor Identification: Use web search to identify 5 primary direct competitors
3. Competitive Intelligence: Research each competitor's positioning, features, pricing, go-to-market
4. Strengths & Weaknesses: Assess capabilities, limitations, and market positioning
5. Differentiation Mapping: Identify gaps, overlaps, and opportunities to differentiate
6. Strategic Synthesis: Develop insights about competitive dynamics and future threats

Output Structure

Market Overview & Definition

• Market size and growth trends
• Primary customer segments and use cases
• Key success factors in this market
• Market dynamics and competitive intensity

Competitive Set Summary

• 5 primary direct competitors identified
• Market positions: leaders, challengers, niche players
• Estimated market share or positioning
• Notable adjacent or indirect competitors

For each of the 5 competitors, provide:

Competitor Profile: Company name, founding date, funding/status, primary market focus, estimated market share, go-to-market strategy

Core Product Strengths: Key features, unique competitive advantages, customer value proposition, technology differentiation or moats, customer satisfaction signals

Product Weaknesses & Gaps: Missing features or use cases, known limitations, technical or operational weaknesses, customer dissatisfaction areas

Business Model & Pricing: Pricing structure (per-seat, per-usage, flat-fee, freemium), price points, go-to-market channels, revenue model and growth stage

Competitive Threats & Advantages: How this competitor threatens $ARGUMENTS, existing customer base and switching costs, recent product updates or strategic moves

Differentiation Opportunities

• Unmet customer needs across the competitive set
• Feature/pricing/UX opportunities to stand out
• Target segments underserved by competitors
• Jobs-to-be-done not effectively solved by competitors
• Channel or go-to-market approaches not yet deployed
• Potential partnerships or integrations competitors lack

Competitive Positioning Recommendation

• Recommended positioning for $ARGUMENTS
• Key differentiators to emphasize
• Segments or use cases to target or avoid
• Competitive threats to monitor over the next 12-18 months

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Mode 2: AI-Focused Competitive Analysis

Analysis Steps

1. Define scope: What AI capabilities or product areas are being compared? What decisions will this analysis inform?
2. Identify competitors: Direct, indirect, AI-native entrants, and open-source alternatives
3. AI capability benchmarking: Evaluate competitors across the AI-specific dimension matrix below
4. Moat assessment: Rate each competitor's data, model, distribution, and network-effect moats
5. Gap analysis: Classify capabilities as Critical Gap / Parity / Your Advantage
6. Strategic recommendations: Where to compete, where to differentiate, where to avoid

AI-Specific Competitive Dimensions

Dimension	Description	How to Assess
Model quality	Output accuracy, relevance, coherence	Blind evaluation, benchmark tasks, user studies
Latency	End-to-end response time perceived by users	Manual testing, API benchmarks (p50/p95)
Cost to serve	Inferred infrastructure efficiency	Pricing analysis, unit economics estimates
Data advantage	Proprietary training data scale and uniqueness	Research, job postings, patents, partnerships
Ecosystem / integrations	Number and quality of integrations	Product teardown, partner announcements
Fine-tuning / customisation	Ability for customers to adapt the model	Documentation, feature announcements
Safety measures	Content moderation, bias controls, guardrails	Red-teaming, terms of service, safety reports
Multimodal capability	Support for text, image, audio, video, code	Feature matrix teardown
API / developer platform	Quality of developer experience and tooling	Docs, community sentiment, GitHub activity

Moat Assessment — Rate each competitor: Strong / Moderate / Weak / None

• Data moat: Proprietary dataset that is hard to replicate (user-generated content, exclusive partnerships, long history)
• Model moat: Significantly better model due to compute, architecture, or research capability
• Distribution moat: Owns the user relationship or channel (OS integration, enterprise contract, consumer habit)
• Network effect moat: Model improves as more users engage (feedback flywheel, marketplace data)

Assess durability over a 12-24 month horizon for each moat.

Capability Gap Analysis

For each AI capability, classify:

• Critical gap: Competitor capability users consider table stakes; you are at a disadvantage
• Parity: You and competitor are equivalent; not a differentiator
• Your advantage: Capability competitors lack or you do materially better

Prioritize closing critical gaps affecting retention or acquisition; deprioritize parity gaps.

Open-Source vs. Proprietary Assessment

• Can customers self-host an open-source alternative? At what capability/cost tradeoff?
• If OSS closes the quality gap, how does that affect proprietary moats?

Tracking AI Competitive Intelligence

• Monitor: product changelogs, developer blogs, arXiv papers, job postings, conference talks
• Watch for: new model releases, capability expansions, pricing changes, safety improvements
• Recommend: monthly intelligence review cadence

Output: Competitor landscape overview table → AI capability comparison matrix → Moat assessment → Gap analysis with prioritization → Strategic recommendations

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Mode 3: Battlecard

Research Steps

1. Research the competitor with web search: current product capabilities, pricing tiers, target market, recent launches, known weaknesses, customer reviews (G2, Capterra, Reddit)
2. If the user provides win/loss data or sales call notes, incorporate those first — they are worth 10x any analysis

Battlecard Output

## Competitive Battlecard: [Your Product] vs [Competitor]
**Last updated**: [today]
**Use when**: [situation where this competitor comes up]

### Quick Summary
**We win when**: [buyer profile and situation where you have advantage]
**We lose when**: [buyer profile and situation where competitor has advantage]
**Key differentiator**: [one sentence]

### Company Overview
Founded: [year] | HQ: [location] | Funding/Status: [stage]
Target market: [ICP] | Positioning: [one sentence]

### Feature Comparison
| Capability | Us | Them | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| [capability 1] | [our approach] | [their approach] | [Us/Them/Tie] |
| [capability 2] | ... | ... | ... |
| Pricing | ... | ... | ... |
| Support | ... | ... | ... |

### Where We Win
- **[Advantage 1]**: [Proof point or customer quote]
- **[Advantage 2]**: [Specific capability they lack]
- **[Advantage 3]**: [Better approach with reasoning]

### Where They Win
- **[Their strength 1]**: [Our counter-positioning]
- **[Their strength 2]**: [How we mitigate this gap]

### Objection Handling
| Prospect Says | Respond With |
|---|---|
| "They have [feature]" | "[Our alternative approach and why it's better]" |
| "They're cheaper" | "[Value framing: TCO, ROI, hidden costs]" |
| "They're more established" | "[Speed, innovation, focus, support advantages]" |

### Landmines to Plant
Questions that expose competitor weaknesses:
1. "How important is [area where we excel] to your team?"
2. "Have you evaluated [specific capability they lack]?"

### Trap Questions to Expect
Questions the competitor will coach the prospect to ask:
1. "[Question]" — How to respond: [response]

### Win/Loss Patterns
**We typically win because**: [top 3 reasons]
**We typically lose because**: [top 3 reasons]
**Key differentiator in competitive deals**: [what tips the scale]

Keep it to one page equivalent — sales reps won't read a 10-page document during a call.

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Output Format

• Standard: Multi-section markdown report with competitor profiles, comparison tables, and positioning recommendations
• AI-Focused: Structured markdown with capability matrix, moat ratings table, gap analysis, and strategic recommendations
• Battlecard: Concise scannable markdown formatted for quick reference during sales calls; use tables, bold text, short bullets

Example

Standard mode prompt: "competitor analysis for Notion" Expected output excerpt:

Market: Collaborative productivity and knowledge management, ~$15B+ TAM, growing 18% YoY Competitor 1 — Confluence: Enterprise-first, strong IT/engineering adoption, complex UX, weak consumer/SMB play Differentiation opportunity: Notion's block-based flexibility wins with power users; underserved opportunity in structured project management for SMBs vs. Asana/Linear

Best Practices

• Always research current competitor websites, pricing pages, and customer reviews before synthesizing
• Use web search to identify product launches, funding, executive moves in the last 6-12 months
• Distinguish between direct competitors and adjacent alternatives
• Validate competitive insights across multiple sources
• For AI analysis, repeat benchmarks quarterly — AI products evolve rapidly
• For battlecards, update quarterly — competitors change fast
• Never trash the competitor in front of the prospect — position on your strengths

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