/battle-card-builder

name: battle-card-builder
argument-hint: "[your product vs which competitor, and the deal context]"
description: "Research and draft a competitive battle card from public evidence — every claim labeled and sourced. Use when a rep needs a field-action card, not a research report."
intent: >-
  Autonomous battle card construction: given your product and one competitor, the AI does the fieldwork
  — pricing pages, reviews, release notes, customer stories — and produces a field-action card with a
  source URL and Fact/Inference/Assumption label on every claim, sized to a rep's thirty seconds.
type: workflow
theme: market-intelligence
best_for:
  - "Arming sales against one competitor with claims they can actually defend"
  - "Turning a competitive snapshot or watch report into a field-action artifact"
  - "Building trap questions whose documented answers favor you"
scenarios:
  - "We keep hitting the same rival in enterprise deals — build the battle card from public evidence"
  - "Our battle card is six months old and sales stopped trusting it; rebuild it with sources"
estimated_time: "20-35 min per run"

Battle Card Builder

Purpose

Build a field-action competitive battle card from public evidence: **use or gather evidence → search plan (if gathering) → draft card with per-claim labels → appendix → next-step options.** A battle card is the artifact a rep opens mid-deal, not a research report — it must fit thirty seconds, every claim must survive being said out loud to a hostile audience, and every claim therefore carries a source URL, a date, and a Fact/Inference/Assumption label. Most battle cards in the wild are unlabeled inference; this skill exists because of what it costs a rep when one of those turns out wrong.

Input

**Works best with:** your product and its primary differentiation, and **the one competitor** this card targets. **Also useful:** the deal context (segment, buyer, common objections or the loss reason that triggered this card), and any [`competitive-research-snapshot`](../competitive-research-snapshot/SKILL.md) or [`competitive-intel-watch`](../competitive-intel-watch/SKILL.md) output in session — the skill uses existing evidence and searches only for gaps and anything older than one quarter.

Input supplied inline with the invocation — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended `ARGUMENTS:` line — counts as answers already given. Use it against the question budget; don't re-ask.

**Arriving empty-handed? That works too.** The skill opens with at most 3 questions (product + competitor, segment + buyer, triggering objection) and proceeds on labeled assumptions if they go unanswered.

**Example invocation:** `Build a battle card: our workflow platform vs [Competitor A], mid-market ops buyers — triggered by three straight losses on "their integrations are deeper."`

Key Concepts

• **Governing protocol:** honors the [`autonomous-investigation`](../autonomous-investigation/SKILL.md)

contract — question budget of 3, search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, Just Enough Mode, stable schema, 4-option Final Step.

• **Discipline mix:** SIGINT (pricing pages, site diffs — the freshest layer, what keeps cards from

going stale) + OSINT (review mining for objection handling) + HUMINT (win/loss ground truth when you have it) — see [`intelligence-collection-disciplines`](../intelligence-collection-disciplines/SKILL.md).

• **Field-action criterion.** Every element earns its place by being usable mid-conversation. Depth

goes in the appendix; the card fits a rep's thirty seconds.

• **Trap questions are evidence work.** A trap question is only safe to ask when you *know the

documented answer* — offense is built from citations, not bravado. "Never ask what you cannot evidence" is the section's law.

• **The "Do Not Say" section is protection.** Claims you can't evidence, or that invite a counter,

are listed explicitly — the card protects the rep from the team's own folklore.

• **Two modes, one artifact.** This skill builds the card from *the world's* evidence

(investigation); a facilitated workshop builds it from *your team's* evidence (win/loss knowledge, deal experience). The mode choice depends on where the evidence lives — bring rich internal win/loss knowledge to a facilitated session instead, and use this skill when the public record is the stronger source.

• **Do-not-invent list:** features, pricing, market share, customer wins, roadmap items, **quotes**.

Application

1. **Check session for existing evidence** — a competitive snapshot or watch report. If present, use it as the evidence base; search only for gaps and freshness (older than one quarter). 2. **Credit inline context**, then ask only the unanswered questions (max 3): 1. Your product, and the one competitor this card targets? 2. What segment and buyer do these deals involve? 3. What objection or loss reason triggered this card? If unanswered, proceed with labeled assumptions. 3. **If researching fresh, show the 3-bullet search plan** — what you'll check (pricing pages, release notes, reviews, customer stories, comparison content), source types, how facts will be separated from inference. Continue unless revised. 4. **Draft the card in the schema below exactly** — cards are diffable across runs, and the watch skill's update flags name these sections.

Card schema (do not reorder)

~~~markdown

Battle Card: [Your Product] vs [Competitor]

**As-of date:** | **Deal context:** [segment, buyer]

1. Thirty-Second Read

• **They win when:** [1-2 bullets, labeled]
• **We win when:** [1-2 bullets, labeled]
• **The one thing to say:** [a single defensible sentence]

2. Say This

• [Talking point] — [evidence: URL, date, label]
• [Max 4; every one sourced]

3. Ask This (trap questions)

• "[Question whose documented answer favors us]" — [the documented answer: URL, label]
• [Max 3; never ask what you cannot evidence]

4.