/competitive-brief

Competitive Brief

If you see unfamiliar placeholders or need to check which tools are connected, see CONNECTORS.md.

Create a competitive analysis brief for one or more competitors or a feature area.

Workflow

1. Scope the Analysis

Ask the user:

• Competitor(s): Which specific competitor(s) to analyze? Or a feature area to compare across competitors?
• Focus: Full product comparison, specific feature area, pricing/packaging, go-to-market, or positioning?
• Context: What decision will this inform? (product strategy, sales enablement, investor/board materials, feature prioritization)

2. Research

Via web search:

• Product pages and feature lists
• Pricing pages and packaging
• Recent product launches, blog posts, and changelogs
• Press coverage and analyst reports
• Customer reviews and ratings (G2, Capterra, TrustRadius)
• Job postings (signal of strategic direction)
• Social media and community discussions

If ~~knowledge base is connected:

• Search for existing competitive analysis documents
• Find win/loss reports or sales battle cards
• Pull prior competitive research

If ~~chat is connected:

• Search for competitive mentions in sales or product channels
• Find recent deal feedback involving competitors

3. Generate the Brief

Competitor Overview

For each competitor:

• Company summary: founding, size, funding/revenue if public, target market
• Product positioning: how they describe themselves, who they target
• Recent momentum: launches, funding, partnerships, customer wins

Feature Comparison

Compare capabilities across key areas relevant to the analysis. See the competitive-analysis skill for rating frameworks and comparison matrix templates.

Positioning Analysis

Analyze how each competitor positions themselves — target customer, category claim, key differentiator, and value proposition. See the competitive-analysis skill for positioning analysis frameworks.

Strengths and Weaknesses

For each competitor:

• Strengths: Where they genuinely excel. What customers praise.
• Weaknesses: Where they fall short. What customers complain about.
• Be honest and evidence-based — do not dismiss competitors or inflate their weaknesses.

Opportunities

Based on the analysis:

• Where are there gaps in competitor offerings we could exploit?
• What are customers asking for that no one provides well?
• Where are competitors making bets we disagree with?
• What market shifts could advantage our approach?

Threats

• Where are competitors investing heavily?
• What competitive moves could disrupt our position?
• Where are we most vulnerable?
• What would a "nightmare scenario" competitive move look like?

Strategic Implications

Tie the analysis back to product strategy:

• What should we build, accelerate, or deprioritize based on this analysis?
• Where should we differentiate vs. achieve parity?
• How should we adjust positioning or messaging?
• What should we monitor going forward?

4. Follow Up

After generating the brief:

• Ask if the user wants to dive deeper on any section
• Offer to create a one-page summary for executives
• Offer to create sales battle cards for competitive deals
• Offer to draft a "how to win against [competitor]" guide
• Offer to set up a monitoring plan for competitive moves

Output Format

Use tables for feature comparisons. Use clear headers for each section. Keep the strategic implications section concise and actionable — this is where the value is for the reader.

Tips

• Be honest about competitor strengths. Dismissing competitors makes the analysis useless.
• Focus on what matters to customers, not what matters to product teams. Customers do not care about architecture elegance.
• Pricing is hard to compare fairly. Note the caveats (different packaging, usage-based vs seat-based, enterprise custom pricing).
• Job postings are underrated competitive intelligence. A competitor hiring ML engineers signals a strategic direction.
• Customer reviews are gold. They reveal what real users love and hate, unfiltered by marketing.
• The most valuable part of competitive analysis is the "so what" — the strategic implications. Do not skip this.
• Competitive analysis has a shelf life. Note the date and flag areas that change quickly.