market-landscape-scan

name	market-landscape-scan
argument-hint	[market or problem space, and the decision it supports]
description	Map a market's segments, players, substitutes, and whitespace with cited evidence. Use when entering or re-evaluating a market before sizing, positioning, or picking competitors to study.
intent	Autonomous market discovery: map how buyers segment the market, who plays where (direct, adjacent, substitutes, emerging), where the money and momentum are, and whether apparent whitespace is opportunity or dead zone — with labeled evidence, so sizing and positioning start from structure instead of vibes.
type	workflow
theme	market-intelligence
best_for	["Mapping who plays in a market before committing to enter or re-position","Scoping a new product line with a defensible view of segments and substitutes","Producing the landscape view that feeds TAM/SAM/SOM sizing and competitor deep-dives"]
scenarios	["We're considering a move into contract-analytics tooling — map that market for me","My exec team keeps citing an analyst quadrant; show me how buyers actually segment this space"]
estimated_time	20-40 min per run

Market Landscape Scan

Purpose

Map a market's structure using a workflow, not a one-shot answer: search plan → segmentation → player mapping → dynamics → whitespace → next-step options. The output is the landscape view that everything downstream stands on — sizing needs to know the segments, positioning needs to know the players, and competitor deep-dives need to know who's worth the effort. This skill maps structure, not magnitude: it tells you who plays where and why, not how big the prize is.

Input

Works best with: the market, segment, or problem space to map — in your words, not an analyst category — and the decision this landscape should support (market entry, new product line, re-positioning, build-vs-buy). Also useful: any boundary narrower than global — geography, buyer size, price band — and players you already know about, so the scan spends its effort on what you don't.

Input supplied inline with the invocation — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended ARGUMENTS: line — counts as answers already given. Use it against the question budget; don't re-ask.

Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The skill opens with at most 3 questions (market, decision, boundary) and proceeds on labeled assumptions if they go unanswered — that's the autonomous-investigation contract.

Example invocation: Run a market landscape scan on developer-facing API observability tools, EU-only — this supports a Q4 market-entry decision.

Key Concepts

• Governing protocol: this skill honors the autonomous-investigation contract — question budget of 3, search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, Just Enough Mode, stable schema, 4-option Final Step.
• Discipline mix: primarily OSINT (analyst and review coverage, press, communities) with GEOINT/DEMOINT for segment reality-checks and FININT for funding signals — see intelligence-collection-disciplines.
• Buyer-view segmentation. Map the market as buyers experience it, not as vendors or analysts carve it — and note where the two disagree. Analyst quadrants are a map someone else drew for their own purposes; the disagreement between vendor categories and buyer reality is often where the opportunity hides.
• Non-consumption is a competitor. "They use spreadsheets" belongs on the player map. Treating substitutes and non-consumption as competitors is the most commercially useful habit in market analysis — the biggest rival is usually the status quo, and it never shows up in a quadrant.