Competitor Analysis

Analyze a user's competitors. Uses Browserbase Search API for discovery and a 4-lane Plan→Research→Synthesize pattern for enrichment — outputting an HTML report with overview, per-competitor deep dives, a side-by-side feature/pricing matrix, and a chronological mentions feed.

Required: BROWSERBASE_API_KEY env var and the browse CLI installed (npm install -g browse).

First-run setup: On the first run you'll be prompted to approve browse cloud fetch, browse cloud search, cat, mkdir, sed, etc. Select "Yes, and don't ask again for: browse cloud fetch:\*" (or equivalent) for each. To permanently approve, add these to your ~/.claude/settings.json under permissions.allow:

"Bash(browse:*)", "Bash(bunx:*)", "Bash(bun:*)", "Bash(node:*)",
"Bash(cat:*)", "Bash(mkdir:*)", "Bash(sed:*)", "Bash(head:*)", "Bash(tr:*)", "Bash(rm:*)"

Path rules: Always use full literal paths in Bash — NOT ~ or $HOME. Resolve the home directory once and use it everywhere. When building subagent prompts, replace {SKILL_DIR} with the full literal path.

Output directory: All output goes to ~/Desktop/{company_slug}_competitors_{YYYY-MM-DD}/. This directory contains one .md file per competitor plus the generated HTML views and CSV.

CRITICAL — Tool restrictions (applies to main agent AND all subagents):

• All web searches: use browse cloud search. NEVER WebSearch.
• All page fetches: use browse cloud fetch --allow-redirects (returns markdown by default; add --format raw if you need the original HTML, then pipe through sed ... | tr -s ' \n' to extract text). NEVER WebFetch. 1 MB response limit — fall back to browse get markdown (after browse open --remote) for JS-heavy pages.
• All research output: subagents write one markdown file per competitor to {OUTPUT_DIR}/{competitor-slug}.md using bash heredoc. NEVER use the Write tool or python3 -c. See references/example-research.md for the file format.
• Report compilation: use node {SKILL_DIR}/scripts/compile_report.mjs {OUTPUT_DIR} --user-company "{user_company}" --open — generates index.html, competitors/*.html, matrix.html, mentions.html, results.csv in one step and opens overview.
• URL deduplication: node {SKILL_DIR}/scripts/list_urls.mjs /tmp --prefix competitor.
• Subagents must use ONLY the Bash tool.
• Main agent NEVER reads raw discovery JSON batch files.

CRITICAL — Minimize permission prompts:

• Subagents MUST batch ALL file writes into a SINGLE Bash call using chained heredocs.
• Batch ALL searches and ALL fetches into single Bash calls via && chaining.

Pipeline Overview

Follow these 8 steps in order. Do not skip or reorder.

1. User Company Research — Deeply understand the user's company, produce precise_category + category_include_keywords + exclusion_list
2. Depth Mode + Seed Input — Choose depth, accept optional seed competitor URLs
3. Discovery (3 parallel waves) — Wave A (alternatives), Wave B (precise category), Wave C (comparison-page graph via "X vs Y" title parsing)
4. Gate — scripts/gate_candidates.mjs fetches each candidate's hero text (via browse cloud fetch) and drops wrong-category URLs
5. Confirm enrichment set with the user — Present PASS / UNKNOWN / rejected-brand-matches via AskUserQuestion. User ticks the real ones, adds any the discovery missed. Skipping this step is wasteful because enrichment is expensive (25 subagents × depth budget) and the gate is imperfect (JS-heavy homepages, Cloudflare challenges, semantic-variant taglines)
6. Deep Enrichment (5 subagents per competitor in deep/deeper modes) — Marketing, Discussion, Social, News, Technical — each lane a separate subagent writing to partials/; then merge_partials.mjs consolidates. In deep/deeper modes, Step 5d adds a 6th Battle Card synthesis lane AFTER Step 5c fact-check completes — produces per-competitor Landmines / Objection Handlers / Talk Tracks grounded in cited evidence.
7. Screenshots — capture_screenshots.mjs via the browse CLI captures a 1280×800 homepage hero per competitor
8. HTML Report — Overview + per-competitor (with embedded hero screenshot + Battle Card card) + matrix + mentions views

---

Step 0: Setup Output Directory

OUTPUT_DIR=~/Desktop/{company_slug}_competitors_{YYYY-MM-DD}
mkdir -p "$OUTPUT_DIR"

Replace {company_slug} with the user's company name (lowercase, hyphenated) and {YYYY-MM-DD} with today's date. Pass {OUTPUT_DIR} as a full literal path to every subagent.

Clean up discovery batch files from prior runs:

rm -f /tmp/competitor_discovery_batch_*.json

Re-runs must start from a clean $OUTPUT_DIR. compile_report.mjs ingests every {slug}.md in the directory, and merge_partials.mjs only overwrites the slugs in the current set — it never deletes ones dropped from a new enrichment set. Since the directory is keyed by date, a same-day re-run with a different competitor set would leave stale competitors in the overview, matrix, CSV, and screenshots. Either use a fresh directory or clear the prior per-competitor files first:

rm -f "$OUTPUT_DIR"/*.md && rm -rf "$OUTPUT_DIR"/partials "$OUTPUT_DIR"/screenshots

Step 1: User Company Research

This step sets the baseline for what "competitor" means AND produces the verified data the Step 5b matrix will use for the userCompany row.

Rule: The user's company gets the same 5-lane research depth as competitors. Do NOT fill userCompany in matrix.json from memory — it will ship false claims to the user's own team. On a search-API run (user company Exa, 2026-04-23), skipping this step produced a matrix that claimed Exa had a "published uptime SLA" (there is no numeric public SLA — only a status page) and marked its MIT-licensed Python SDK as open-source: false (the repo is github.com/exa-labs/exa-py, LICENSE confirmed MIT). Both errors would have surfaced in the "Where you're winning" card as fabricated moats.

Process:

1. Ask the user for their company name or URL.

1. Check for an existing profile at {SKILL_DIR}/profiles/{company-slug}.json. If it exists, load it and confirm with the user: "I have your profile from {researched_at}. Still accurate?" — if yes, skip to Step 2 BUT still run the partial-lane enrichment below so matrix synthesis has fresh feature evidence.

The profile format is shared with company-research (same shape). If a user already has a profile saved under company-research/profiles/, you may copy it into this skill's profiles directory rather than re-researching.

1. Run the full 5-lane enrichment on the user's company — identical to the competitor pattern in Step 5. For each lane, spawn a Bash-only subagent that writes to {OUTPUT_DIR}/partials/{user-slug}.{lane}.md:

• marketing — tagline, positioning, pricing tiers, features, integrations, open-source components (SDK repos + licenses), regions offered, compliance (SOC 2 / HIPAA / trust portal URL)
• technical — REST + streaming API support (with docs URLs), SDK languages, MCP server URL, neural vs keyword retrieval modes, reranking / highlights / live-crawl specifics, published uptime SLA (actual %, not status page), third-party retrieval-quality benchmarks
• discussion, social, news — optional in quick mode, recommended in deep+

See references/research-patterns.md → "Self-Research" for sub-questions. Each finding MUST cite a URL.

1. Run merge_partials.mjs on the user's partials too — produces {OUTPUT_DIR}/{user-slug}.md, the canonical source Step 5b reads from for userCompany flags.

1. Synthesize into a profile: Company, Product, Existing Customers, Competitors (seed list), Use Cases, precise_category, category_include_keywords, exclusion_list. Do NOT include ICP — this skill doesn't need it.

• precise_category: one sentence describing the category. e.g., "AI web search API for agents with neural + keyword retrieval". Avoid vague words like "tools" / "platform".
• category_include_keywords: 8-15 phrases a direct competitor's marketing would likely contain (hero or title). Include semantic variants.
• exclusion_list: phrases that indicate a different category — used by the gate to reject false positives (e.g. antidetect browser, scraping api, screenshot api, residential proxy).

See references/research-patterns.md → "Synthesis Output" for the exact format and Exa as a worked example.

1. Present the profile + the user-company .md to the user for confirmation. Do not proceed until confirmed.

1. Save the confirmed profile to {SKILL_DIR}/profiles/{company-slug}.json.

Step 2: Depth Mode + Seed Input

Ask clarifying questions via AskUserQuestion with checkboxes:

• Known competitors? Text area for URLs/names (optional — discovery will find more).
• Depth mode?
• quick — marketing surface only, many competitors, ~2-3 tool calls each
• deep — + external signal (mentions, reviews, news), ~5-8 tool calls each
• deeper — + public benchmarks + strategic diff vs user's company, ~10-15 tool calls each
• Target count? Rough number of competitors to research (e.g., 10 / 20 / 50).

This is the ONLY user interaction. After this, execute silently until the report is ready.

| Mode | Research per competitor | Best for |
|------|--------------------------|----------|
| quick | Lane 1 only (homepage + pricing) | Scanning ~30-50 competitors fast |
| deep | Lanes 1+2 | ~15-25 competitors with external signal |
| deeper | All 4 lanes (+ benchmarks + strategic diff) | ~5-15 competitors with full intel |

Step 3: Discovery (3 parallel waves)

Formula: ceil(target_count / 20) queries per wave. Over-discover ~3x because the gate drops ~40-60%.

Evaluation on a search-API run shows all three waves are additive — skip any and you lose real competitors:

Wave A — Generic alternatives (broad; heavy aggregator noise, filtered out later)

• "alternatives to {user_company}"
• "{user_company} competitors"

Wave B — Precise category (uses precise_category from the profile)

• "{precise_category}" verbatim
• 2-3 queries composed from the most distinctive tokens (e.g. "web search api for ai agents", "retrieval API for LLMs")

Wave C — Comparison-page graph (highest precision)

• "{user_company} vs"
• "{seed1} vs", "{seed2} vs", "{seed3} vs" (seeds from the profile's competitors list)
• After the searches, run scripts/extract_vs_names.mjs to parse "X vs Y" patterns from result titles — this uniquely surfaces competitors that don't appear as URL hits.

Process:

1. Issue 3 parallel browse cloud search Bash calls (one per wave) in a SINGLE message — NOT subagents. Each Bash call chains its 2-4 queries with &&. See references/workflow.md → "Discovery — parallel Bash, not subagents" for the exact recipe. Subagents are too heavy for a workload of 6-12 browse cloud search calls.
2. After all waves complete:

   node {SKILL_DIR}/scripts/list_urls.mjs /tmp --prefix competitor > /tmp/competitor_urls.txt
   node {SKILL_DIR}/scripts/extract_vs_names.mjs /tmp --prefix competitor \
     --seed "{user_company},{seed1},{seed2},{seed3}" \
     > /tmp/competitor_vs_names.jsonl

1. Filter /tmp/competitor_urls.txt — remove blog posts, news, AI-tool directories (seektool.ai, respan.ai, agentsindex.ai, toolradar.com, aitoolsatlas.ai, vibecodedthis.com, etc.), review aggregators (g2.com, capterra.com), databases (crunchbase.com, tracxn.com), user's own domain. See references/workflow.md for the full noise-domain list.
2. For vs_names entries that have a resolved domain, add them. For unresolved names, optionally run browse cloud search "{name}" --num-results 3 and pick the top root domain.
3. Merge with user-provided seed URLs. Dedup by hostname → /tmp/competitor_candidates.txt.

Step 4: Gate (category-fit filter)

Drop candidates whose marketing identifies them as a different category before enrichment burns tool calls on them.

cat /tmp/competitor_candidates.txt \
  | node {SKILL_DIR}/scripts/gate_candidates.mjs \
      --include "{profile.category_include_keywords joined with commas}" \
      --exclude "{profile.exclusion_list joined with commas}" \
      --concurrency 6 \
  > /tmp/competitor_gated.jsonl

grep '"status":"PASS"' /tmp/competitor_gated.jsonl \
  | node -e 'require("fs").readFileSync(0,"utf-8").split("\n").filter(Boolean).forEach(l => { try { console.log(JSON.parse(l).url); } catch {} })' \
  > /tmp/competitor_passed.txt

The gate fetches each candidate's homepage via browse cloud fetch --allow-redirects --format raw, extracts the first 800 chars of visible text, and classifies position-aware: exclude in