competitive-landscape

Overview of competitive-landscape skill

What the competitive-landscape skill does

The competitive-landscape skill helps an agent produce structured competitive analysis instead of a loose list of rivals. It is built around established strategy frameworks such as Porter's Five Forces, Blue Ocean thinking, and positioning maps so you can move from “who else is in this market?” to “where can we compete, differentiate, and defend?”

Who should use this skill

This competitive-landscape skill is best for founders, product strategists, consultants, operators, and investors who need a fast but disciplined view of market structure. It is especially useful when you are evaluating a startup idea, preparing a GTM plan, pressure-testing positioning, or writing an investor-facing market narrative.

The real job-to-be-done

Most users do not just want competitor names. They want to answer harder questions:

• Is this market structurally attractive?
• Where are incumbents weak or over-served?
• What position is crowded versus open?
• What advantage could actually hold up over time?
• What should we avoid building because the landscape is already saturated?

That is where competitive-landscape is more useful than a generic “analyze my competitors” prompt.

What makes competitive-landscape different

The main differentiator is its framework-first approach. The skill guides analysis through strategy lenses that force better reasoning:

• industry pressure, not just company comparison
• differentiation opportunities, not just feature tables
• market whitespace, not just existing categories
• defensibility, not just launchability

That makes it a better fit for strategic decisions than for lightweight prospecting or sales battlecards.

What this skill does not include

The repository evidence shows this skill is primarily a single SKILL.md document with no bundled scripts, datasets, or helper resources. That matters for adoption: competitive-landscape gives the agent a strong analytical structure, but it does not automatically fetch market data, validate claims, or build live competitor lists for you. Output quality depends heavily on the inputs and evidence you provide.

How to Use competitive-landscape skill

How to install competitive-landscape

If you are using the Skills ecosystem, install the skill from the repository with:

npx skills add https://github.com/wshobson/agents --skill competitive-landscape

Because this skill lives at plugins/startup-business-analyst/skills/competitive-landscape, it is best treated as a strategy-analysis skill rather than a general research tool.

What to read before first use

Read SKILL.md first and read it fully. For this repository, that is the important source of truth because there are no visible support files like resources/, rules/, or scripts to clarify edge cases. Skimming only the description will underspecify how the agent should reason.

What input the skill needs

The competitive-landscape skill works best when you provide four kinds of input:

1. the market or category you are analyzing
2. the customer segment
3. the product scope
4. the decision you need to make

Good inputs:

• “AI note-taking assistant for lawyers in US mid-market firms”
• “B2B payroll software for companies with 50–500 employees in Germany”
• “Remote patient monitoring platform for cardiology clinics”

Weak inputs:

• “analyze competitors for my app”
• “tell me the market landscape”
• “who are our rivals?”

Without segment, geography, and scope, the agent will produce generic analysis that sounds strategic but does not help a real decision.

Turn a rough goal into a strong competitive-landscape prompt

A rough request like:

Analyze the competition for my startup

should be upgraded into something like:

Use the competitive-landscape skill to analyze the market for an AI customer support copilot for Shopify merchants. Focus on SMB merchants in North America. Evaluate direct competitors, adjacent substitutes, Porter's Five Forces, likely barriers to entry, key buyer switching costs, and whitespace opportunities. End with a recommended positioning angle and 3 defensible differentiation bets.

This works better because it specifies:

• market
• buyer
• geography
• strategic lenses
• expected output shape
• decision-oriented conclusion

Best workflow for competitive-landscape usage

A practical workflow is:

1. define the target segment narrowly
2. name known competitors and substitutes
3. provide customer pain points and buying criteria
4. ask the agent to run the framework analysis
5. review the first pass for missing competitors or bad assumptions
6. rerun with tighter scope and evidence
7. extract positioning implications, not just observations

The skill is most valuable in steps 4–7. If you stop after a surface-level competitor list, you are not really using its strengths.

What outputs to ask for

For better competitive-landscape usage, ask for outputs that support decisions. Good examples:

• Five Forces analysis with evidence-backed implications
• positioning map by price, capability, or target segment
• Blue Ocean opportunities and over-served customer pain points
• direct vs indirect competitor segmentation
• likely sources of durable advantage
• risks of entering the market now
• recommendation memo for positioning

These outputs are more actionable than a broad “market overview.”

How to provide evidence that improves results

This skill becomes much better when you supply source material such as:

• your website or product brief
• competitor URLs
• pricing pages
• feature pages
• analyst notes
• customer interview summaries
• sales call objections
• win/loss notes

If you do not provide evidence, the model may still generate a plausible competitive-landscape analysis, but it will be more generic and less reliable.

Practical prompt pattern for competitive-landscape for Competitive Analysis

Use a prompt structure like this:

• business: what you sell
• customer: who buys
• geography: where you compete
• alternatives: current competitors and substitutes
• evaluation lens: Five Forces, positioning, whitespace
• decision goal: pricing, GTM, feature focus, fundraising narrative
• output format: table, memo, map, ranked list

Example:

Use the competitive-landscape skill for Competitive Analysis of a vertical SaaS product for dental clinics in the UK. Compare direct software competitors and non-software substitutes. Analyze threat of entrants, supplier power, buyer power, substitutes, and rivalry. Then propose a positioning strategy that avoids feature parity competition.

Where this skill is strongest

The competitive-landscape skill is strongest when you need:

• strategy framing before entering a market
• a structured investor or board discussion
• differentiation ideas grounded in competition
• a more disciplined alternative to freeform prompting

It is less strong for real-time market intelligence, exact market sizing, or exhaustive competitor discovery.

Common adoption blockers

Before installing, users should know the likely blockers:

• no built-in live data collection
• no repository-side scripts or automation
• framework quality can create false confidence if inputs are weak
• broad markets create vague outputs
• users may confuse “competitive analysis” with “feature comparison only”

If your main need is automated scraping or monitoring, this skill alone is not enough.

competitive-landscape skill FAQ

Is competitive-landscape better than a normal prompt?

Usually yes, if your task is strategic rather than casual. A normal prompt can list competitors, but the competitive-landscape skill gives the agent a clearer analytical path: industry forces, positioning, substitutes, and differentiation. That structure reduces guesswork and produces outputs that are easier to use in planning.

Is this competitive-landscape skill beginner-friendly?

Yes, but only if you can describe your market clearly. You do not need an MBA to use it, but you do need enough context to define customer, product scope, and competitors. Beginners often get weak results because their prompt is too broad, not because the skill is too advanced.

When should I not use competitive-landscape?

Do not use competitive-landscape as your main tool when you need:

• live competitive monitoring
• web-scale competitor discovery
• legal or regulatory diligence
• deep financial benchmarking
• exact TAM modeling

This skill is for structured strategic analysis, not a replacement for market research systems.

Does it help with positioning, or only competitor analysis?

Yes. One of the practical advantages of competitive-landscape is that it pushes beyond rivalry lists into positioning and defensibility. That makes it useful for messaging, category framing, and identifying where not to compete head-on.

Can I use competitive-landscape for investor prep?

Yes. It is a good fit for investor memos and pitch preparation because investors often care about market structure, barriers to entry, substitutes, and why your wedge can hold. Just make sure you validate any market facts before presenting them externally.

Does the repository include data sources or automation?

Based on the repository structure provided here, no meaningful support files are surfaced beyond SKILL.md. So the value is the analysis framework itself, not packaged research assets or automated workflows.

How to Improve competitive-landscape skill

Give narrower market definitions

The fastest way to improve competitive-landscape output is to narrow the market. “Project management software” is too broad. “Project management software for architecture firms with 20–200 employees in the US” is much better. Narrow scope produces better competitor sets, stronger Five Forces reasoning, and more believable whitespace.

Include substitutes, not just direct competitors

Many weak analyses miss the real competition because they only name category peers. Improve results by listing substitutes such as spreadsheets, agencies, internal teams, legacy tools, or adjacent platforms. In many markets, substitutes matter more than direct startups.

Ask for evidence-tagged reasoning

A useful upgrade is to ask the agent to separate:

• observations
• assumptions
• missing evidence
• recommendations

That keeps the competitive-landscape skill from presenting uncertain claims as facts and helps you see what needs validation.

Push past feature comparison

If the first output becomes a feature matrix, ask for another pass centered on:

• switching costs
• buyer decision criteria
• channel access
• regulatory friction
• network effects
• data advantages
• brand trust
• implementation difficulty

These are often more important than raw feature count.

Correct the first draft aggressively

Treat the first run as a draft. Improve it by editing:

• wrong competitor set
• wrong buyer segment
• overbroad category definition
• missing substitutes
• unrealistic advantage claims

Then rerun. The skill is much more useful in iteration than in one-shot mode.

Ask for a final strategic recommendation

A common failure mode is stopping at analysis. To improve competitive-landscape usage, end with a request such as:

Based on this competitive-landscape analysis, recommend the best market position for a new entrant, what to deprioritize, and what evidence we should gather next before committing.

That converts framework output into an actual decision.

Pair the skill with your own source material

The best way to improve competitive-landscape for Competitive Analysis is to feed it your real operating context:

• CRM notes
• lost deal reasons
• customer interview quotes
• pricing objections
• analyst call notes
• implementation pain points

This turns a generic strategic framework into a company-specific analysis that is much harder to get from a plain prompt alone.