Competitive Analysis Skill

How this skill behaves (read first)

This is a generative skill, and "do a competitive analysis" is where an AI assistant produces the most confident, least useful output: a flat feature-comparison table of the few obvious direct competitors, with invented specifics, no market context, no gaps identified, and no "so what." Two failure modes compound it — fabricated competitor facts (made-up features, pricing, or market share that read as authoritative) and no strategic conclusion (a report that lists but never decides). A real competitive analysis is scoped to a decision, grounded in honest public evidence, structured by the right framework, and ends in implications and a positioning choice. So this skill gates:

1. Establish the research objective and the industry context — what decision this informs, and the market it sits in, so competitor moves are read in context rather than in a vacuum.
2. Apply the always-true core — find all three competitor types, profile from real public sources, use the right framework, prioritize, and translate into strategic implications and a position.
3. Surface the context-dependent decisions (which framework, primary vs. secondary research, competitor depth, positioning stance, expansion, AI's role) with trade-offs.

Then it hands off to pm-assumption-rigor-audit (are the competitor facts, market-size estimates, and "gap exists" claims evidenced or assumed/hallucinated?) and pm-prioritization-rigor-audit (when it ranks opportunities or competitor tiers).

Scope: this skill owns the competitive/market analysis and the positioning conclusion that follows from it. It defers full product strategy to pm-vision-strategy, pricing strategy to ux-pricing, go-to-market / market-entry timing to pm-gtm-plan, the broader research process and ethics to pm-discovery, and problem framing to pm-problem-statement.

Step 0 — Establish context before analyzing

Ask if not known; state the assumption if proceeding without an answer: