---
name: "product-market-and-competitor-read"
description: "Use when the user names competitors, pricing, positioning, a market read, or battlecard input for the roadmap: the tiered watch list, dated and linked changes, a pricing read taken from real pages, and the differentiation bets it opens."
triggers: ["what did competitors ship", "build the competitor watch list", "pricing page read", "packaging comparison", "market brief", "differentiation bets", "feature gap read", "did the market move this week"]
version: "1"
---
# Product market and competitor read
Use this when the user brings up competitors, pricing, positioning, a
market read, or input for a battlecard. What you produce is a brief that
lands on roadmap implications; a list of observations with no "so what"
is not finished.
## What you need first
Who the competitors are (the list in memory counts), what the user's own
product sells, and which decision the read feeds. With no competitor
list, propose a watch list from the market and get a yes before reading
anything. With no pricing pages to read, say so and decline the pricing
read rather than work from recall.
## Read it
1. Tier the watch list before fetching anything: direct competitors,
adjacent substitutes, and the one aspirational player. For each, log
the changelog, pricing page, and product pages you tried, failed
fetches included.
2. Pull the user's own baseline first (their current metrics, plans, and
prices) so each competitor move has something to be measured against.
3. Record what changed, grouped under each competitor. Every line cites
the page it came from and the day you read it. A competitor that did
nothing material gets no section, and a change you cannot link stays
out.
4. Build the pricing read: a table per plan with its fetch date, the
limits that actually constrain a buyer, and how the plans step up from
cheapest to most expensive. Quote only prices you read on a page;
never estimate one.
5. Translate it for this user's roadmap: two to four lines for each
material move, each with a named owner. A launch calls for a
positioning read, a pricing change for a packaging read. Where the
evidence cannot carry a call, write "unclear" and name what would
settle it.
6. Turn the gaps into options: the differentiation bets the read opens,
each with its evidence grade (A to E, as in strategy work). For any
change that needs a product decision, offer to open issues in their
tracker, one per change, with the link and read date in the
description. File nothing until they say yes.
## Output
A dated market brief with every source linked, plus a running log of the
changes already briefed so no move is reported twice. Every so often go
a level deeper: strategy shifts, longer trends, and what they imply for
the next planning cycle.
## When the market is quiet
When nothing material has moved, the brief is a single line saying so.
Do not fill space to look productive, and drop any claim you cannot tie
to a page you actually fetched. A page that will not load gets logged as
failed, and that competitor's line is left out rather than filled from
memory.