# Competitor monitoring Human Guide

## What This Is For
When to Use Founder wants to know when competitors change pricing, ship features, or raise funding Founder wants a recurring "what changed this week" scan of competitor activity Founder. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for competitive research: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Competitor monitoring agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for competitor monitoring.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Competitor monitoring guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- Founder wants to know when competitors change pricing, ship features, or raise funding
- Founder wants a recurring "what changed this week" scan of competitor activity
- Founder wants to detect strategic shifts from competitor job postings, blog posts, or product updates
- Founder wants to stay informed without manually checking 10 websites daily
- List of 3-7 competitors to track (names, websites, product URLs)
- What the founder cares about most (pricing, features, positioning, hiring, funding, content)
- Monitoring frequency (weekly recommended for early-stage, biweekly for established markets)
- The founder's own positioning (to flag threats and opportunities)
- **Define the monitoring surface** — for each competitor, identify what to watch:
- **Pricing page** — plan changes, new tiers, free plan adjustments
- **Changelog / release notes** — new features, deprecations, platform shifts
- **Job postings** — engineering roles signal product direction, sales roles signal GTM shifts, exec hires signal strategy changes

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: When to Use, Context Required, Workflow, Output Format, Competitor Intel Brief — Week of [Date], Summary, Changes Detected, Job Posting Signals, Emerging Patterns, Action Items.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- Starting without a clear audience or goal.
- Asking for a final artifact before sharing examples or constraints.
- Accepting a generic first draft without checking it against the intended use.

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Competitor monitoring human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the shawnpang/startup-founder-skills skill entry for `competitor-monitoring`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Competitor Monitoring

## When to Use
- Founder wants to know when competitors change pricing, ship features, or raise funding
- Founder wants a recurring "what changed this week" scan of competitor activity
- Founder wants to detect strategic shifts from competitor job postings, blog posts, or product updates
- Founder wants to stay informed without manually checking 10 websites daily

This is the **recurring sibling** of `competitive-analysis` (one-time deep dive). Use this skill for ongoing monitoring, not initial research.

## Context Required
- List of 3-7 competitors to track (names, websites, product URLs)
- What the founder cares about most (pricing, features, positioning, hiring, funding, content)
- Monitoring frequency (weekly recommended for early-stage, biweekly for established markets)
- The founder's own positioning (to flag threats and opportunities)

## Workflow

1. **Define the monitoring surface** — for each competitor, identify what to watch:
   - **Pricing page** — plan changes, new tiers, free plan adjustments
   - **Changelog / release notes** — new features, deprecations, platform shifts
   - **Job postings** — engineering roles signal product direction, sales roles signal GTM shifts, exec hires signal strategy changes
   - **Blog / content** — new positioning, case studies (reveal target customers), thought leadership pivots
   - **Social media** — founder posts, company announcements, community reactions
   - **Review sites** — new reviews on G2, Capterra, Trustpilot (sentiment shifts)
   - **Funding / press** — Crunchbase alerts, press releases, media coverage
2. **Set up the monitoring stack** — recommend tools and manual checks:
   - **Automated:** Google Alerts (brand mentions), Visualping or ChangeTower (page change detection), Crunchbase alerts (funding), LinkedIn job alerts
   - **Manual weekly scan:** pricing pages, changelogs, recent blog posts, latest job postings
   - **Quarterly deep dive:** full `competitive-analysis` refresh
3. **Run the scan** — check all sources for the monitoring period and flag changes.
4. **Analyze signals** — for each change detected:
   - What changed (factual description)
   - What it signals (interpretation — are they moving upmarket? entering your segment? struggling with churn?)
   - Threat level (none / watch / respond / urgent)
   - Recommended action (if any)
5. **Generate the report** — produce a concise weekly/biweekly competitor intel brief.

## Output Format

```markdown
## Competitor Intel Brief — Week of [Date]

### Summary
[1-2 sentence overview: "Quiet week. Competitor A shipped a free tier. No pricing changes elsewhere."]

### Changes Detected

**[Competitor A]**
- **What changed:** [factual description]
- **Signal:** [what this likely means strategically]
- **Threat level:** [None / Watch / Respond / Urgent]
- **Recommended action:** [what to do, if anything]

**[Competitor B]**
- No changes detected this period.

### Job Posting Signals
| Competitor | New Roles | Signal |
|-----------|-----------|--------|
| [A] | 3 enterprise AEs, VP Sales | Moving upmarket |
| [B] | ML engineer, data scientist | Building AI features |

### Emerging Patterns
- [Pattern observed across multiple competitors or over time]

### Action Items
- [ ] [Specific action for the founder]
```

## Frameworks & Best Practices

**Reading job postings as strategy signals:**
| Role Type | What It Signals |
|-----------|----------------|
| Enterprise AEs / Sales Engineers | Moving upmarket or launching enterprise tier |
| DevRel / Community Manager | Investing in developer ecosystem or community-led growth |
| ML/AI Engineers | Building AI features or data products |
| International roles / specific geo | Expanding to new markets |
| Product Marketing Manager | Repositioning or launching new product lines |