swot-analysis

name	swot-analysis
argument-hint	[company and scope, and the decision it supports]
description	Build an evidence-cited SWOT of one company — yours or a competitor's — from public sources, ending with the S-O/W-T crossings. Use for strategy reviews, board prep, or competitor depth.
intent	An evidence-cited SWOT from the public record: strengths and weaknesses from documented capability and customer voice, opportunities and threats from market and macro signals — every entry labeled and sourced, closing with the S-O attack and W-T exposure crossings that most SWOTs skip.
type	workflow
theme	market-intelligence
best_for	["Strategy reviews and board prep that need a defensible read on one company's position","Competitor depth after a snapshot has identified who matters","Partnership or acquisition evaluation grounded in evidence, not impressions"]
scenarios	["SWOT our biggest competitor before the strategy offsite — from public evidence","We're evaluating a partnership with [company]; what does the public record say about their position?"]
estimated_time	20-35 min per run

SWOT Analysis (Evidence-Cited)

Purpose

Build an evidence-cited SWOT of one company — yours or a competitor's — from the public record: use or gather evidence → four labeled quadrants → crossings → next-step options. Strengths and weaknesses come from documented capability and customer voice; opportunities and threats from market, competitor, and macro signals. Every entry carries a source and a label, and the analysis ends with the S-O and W-T crossings — because a SWOT without "so what" is a parking lot with four sections.

Input

Works best with: the company to analyze, the scope (whole company or one product line/market), and the decision this SWOT should support. Also useful: the perspective — theirs, or yours competing with them — and any research already in session (a competitive-research-snapshot, VoC themes, a landscape scan, company-intel output): the SWOT then synthesizes instead of re-searching.

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 (company + scope, decision, perspective) and proceeds on labeled assumptions if they go unanswered.

Example invocation: Evidence-cited SWOT on [Competitor A]'s mid-market product line, from our perspective — supports the Q3 positioning refresh. Last month's snapshot is attached.

Key Concepts

• Governing protocol: honors the autonomous-investigation contract — question budget of 3, search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, Just Enough Mode (max 5 ranked entries per quadrant), stable schema, 4-option Final Step. Disciplines: OSINT + FININT + HUMINT per intelligence-collection-disciplines.
• Quadrant discipline. S and W are internal and current; O and T are external. The most common SWOT error is an "opportunity" that requires the company to act — that's a strategy, not an opportunity. Flag it when you catch it; catching it is half the teaching.
• Claimed vs. evidenced advantage. Strengths sourced from the company's own marketing are claims; strengths corroborated by customer voice, filings, or independent coverage are evidence. Customer voice weighs heaviest on weaknesses — buyers document weaknesses vendors won't.