Find Competitive Edge

Treat an edge as a causal system, not a collection of flattering labels. A strategy vector counts only when a capability changes participant behavior or competitor economics in a way that helps the subject acquire, retain, or protect a scarce resource.

Authority and boundaries

Run this as a read-only strategy analysis. Inspect material the user made available and return the result in the conversation by default. Do not edit product artifacts, persist a strategy document, mutate external systems, or start implementation unless an outer authorized workflow owns that action. If durable output is explicitly requested, use the consuming repository's documentation rules or documenting-work when available.

Separate observed capabilities and outcomes from proposed ones. A new service can have a defensible hypothesis, but not an evidenced moat. Verify time-sensitive market claims when current evidence is required and tools are available; otherwise mark them as assumptions with a validation method.

Treat hostile vectors such as violence, sabotage, parasitism, espionage, deceptive lures, and coercive litigation as threat-model lenses only. Never turn them into instructions for harm, intrusion, theft, deception, harassment, or unlawful exclusion. Reject a portfolio that depends on those acts and name a lawful, non-deceptive substitute when one exists.

Use an explicitly invoked first-principles pass when the product objective or inherited problem framing itself must be challenged. Use market research as evidence input, not as a substitute for the mechanism analysis. Do not let a recommended portfolio silently become product requirements; pass user-accepted decisions to the appropriate specification workflow.

Frame the arena

Establish the following before selecting vectors: