# Competitor discovery Human Guide

## What This Is For
Use when you don't know who your competitors are, when entering a new market, or when refreshing the competitor list after a pivot or market shift. 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 discovery 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 discovery.
- 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 discovery 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
- **Product description** — what it does, what category it's in, key features
- **Target audience** — who buys or uses the product (role, industry, company size)
- **Known competitors** (optional) — names or URLs to include without searching
- **Number to find** (optional) — default: 5-7
- **Category:** "[category] tools 2025 2026" or "[category] software"
- **Alternative:** "[product name] alternatives" or "tools like [product name]"
- **Problem:** "[primary use case] solution" or "[pain point] tool"
- **Audience:** "best [category] for [target company type]" or "[category] for [target role]"
- **Comparison:** "best [category] compared" or "top [category] platforms"
- **Review sites:** "[category] G2" or "[category] Capterra" (to mine company names from lists)
- Extract company names and domains that appear across multiple results
- Pull companies listed on review/comparison sites (G2, Capterra, etc.) — these are strong signals

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Usage, Process, Step 1: Gather Inputs, Step 2: Build Search Queries, Step 3: Search and Collect, Step 4: Quick Profile Each Candidate, Step 5: Present for Confirmation, Output Format, Competitors, Search Queries Used.

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
- Use when you don't know who your competitors are, when entering a new market, or when refreshing the competitor list after a pivot or market shift.
- Never include a company without visiting their site — one-liners must come from their actual homepage.
- Never guess at pricing — only note what's publicly visible on the homepage or pricing page.
- Never include more than 7 competitors without user approval — keep the list focused.

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Competitor discovery 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 superamped/ai-marketing-skills skill entry for `competitor-discovery`.

## 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 Discovery

## Usage

Use when you don't know who your competitors are, when entering a new market, or when refreshing the competitor list after a pivot or market shift.

## Process

### Step 1: Gather Inputs

Ask the user for:
1. **Product description** — what it does, what category it's in, key features
2. **Target audience** — who buys or uses the product (role, industry, company size)
3. **Known competitors** (optional) — names or URLs to include without searching
4. **Number to find** (optional) — default: 5-7

### Step 2: Build Search Queries

Construct 4-6 search queries mixing these angles:

- **Category:** "[category] tools 2025 2026" or "[category] software"
- **Alternative:** "[product name] alternatives" or "tools like [product name]"
- **Problem:** "[primary use case] solution" or "[pain point] tool"
- **Audience:** "best [category] for [target company type]" or "[category] for [target role]"
- **Comparison:** "best [category] compared" or "top [category] platforms"
- **Review sites:** "[category] G2" or "[category] Capterra" (to mine company names from lists)

Tailor queries to the product type. A B2B SaaS product needs different queries than a marketplace or agency service.

### Step 3: Search and Collect

Run web searches for each query. For each result:
- Extract company names and domains that appear across multiple results
- Pull companies listed on review/comparison sites (G2, Capterra, etc.) — these are strong signals
- Skip aggregator sites themselves, job boards, news articles about funding, and clearly unrelated results

Compile a **candidate list** of 8-12 companies. For each, note:
- **Name**
- **URL** (homepage)
- **How found** — which search queries surfaced them

Rank candidates by frequency — companies appearing in 3+ different searches are almost certainly direct competitors.

### Step 4: Quick Profile Each Candidate

For each candidate, fetch their homepage (and pricing page if easily accessible) and extract:
- **One-liner** — what they say they do, in their own words
- **Target audience signals** — who the site speaks to
- **Overlap** — how directly they compete (direct / adjacent / tangential)

Classify each candidate:
- **Direct competitor** — same problem, same audience, similar solution
- **Adjacent competitor** — same audience but different approach, or same approach but different audience
- **Tangential** — some overlap but fundamentally different product

Drop tangential candidates unless the list would be too short (fewer than 3 direct competitors).

### Step 5: Present for Confirmation

Present the ranked list to the user:

```
I found these competitors for [product name]:

Direct competitors:
1. [Name] — [one-liner] — [url]
2. [Name] — [one-liner] — [url]
3. [Name] — [one-liner] — [url]

Adjacent competitors:
4. [Name] — [one-liner] — [url]
5. [Name] — [one-liner] — [url]

Should I save these? Any to add or remove?
```

Wait for user confirmation. They may know competitors that web search missed, or flag false positives.

## Output Format