/intel-discipline-advisor

name: intel-discipline-advisor
argument-hint: "[the decision or competitive question on your desk]"
description: "Triage a competitive or market question into the right intelligence disciplines, cadence, and executing skill. Use when you know something needs researching but not which channel to run."
intent: >-
  Interactive triage for market intelligence: three adaptive questions about the decision on your desk,
  then numbered recommendations naming the discipline mix (OSINT, FININT, TECHINT...), the cadence, and
  the investigation skill that executes — teaching the decision-to-discipline mapping through use, so
  you eventually stop needing the advisor.
type: interactive
theme: market-intelligence
best_for:
  - "Picking the two or three collection disciplines a specific decision actually needs"
  - "Setting up a watch cadence that matches how fast the evidence really changes"
  - "Learning the decision-to-discipline mapping instead of running everything on everything"
scenarios:
  - "I think a competitor is up to something but I don't know where to look first"
  - "I have four hours this quarter for competitive intel — where do they go?"
estimated_time: "5-10 min"

Intel Discipline Advisor

Purpose

Triage a competitive or market question into the right intelligence response: which of the eight collection disciplines to run, on what cadence, feeding which artifact, executed by which skill. The [`intelligence-collection-disciplines`](../intelligence-collection-disciplines/SKILL.md) compendium holds everything about every channel; this advisor answers the question a busy PM actually has — *"given what's on my desk, which two or three channels matter, and where do my limited hours go?"* Running every discipline on every question is the failure mode; scoping to the decision is the craft. The advisor teaches the mapping as it routes, so by your third session you won't need it. That's the goal.

Input

**Works best with:** the decision or question on your desk, in your words — "I think [Competitor A] is building something," "my TAM slide got shredded," "sales keeps getting surprised." **Also useful:** any signal you've already noticed (a job posting, a pricing change, an earnings remark), your time budget, and whether you're limited to free sources.

Anything supplied with the invocation itself — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended `ARGUMENTS:` line — counts as answers already given. Use it and skip whatever it covers; don't re-ask.

**Arriving empty-handed? That works too.** The advisor opens by asking what's on your desk, with enumerated situations to pick from.

**Example invocation:** `Intel discipline advisor: two of their senior engineers just followed our CTO on a preprint server, and their careers page doubled — what do I run?`

Key Concepts

• **Facilitation protocol:** use [`workshop-facilitation`](../workshop-facilitation/SKILL.md) as the

default interaction protocol (entry modes, one question per turn, progress labels, numbered recommendations). This file defines the domain logic.

• **The routing brain** is the artifact-mapping table in `intelligence-collection-disciplines`:

every PM artifact has a known discipline mix and refresh cadence. The advisor's job is matching the user's situation to a row — and *showing the match*, because the mapping is the lesson.

• **Signals already seen are a head start.** If the user noticed a job posting surge, HUMINT has

already flagged once — the recommendation starts from "1 discipline flagged" on the confidence stacking ladder and names which *independent* channels would corroborate (see [`autonomous-investigation`](../autonomous-investigation/SKILL.md)).

• **Cadence must match evidence speed and human capacity.** Pricing pages change monthly; statistics

releases change annually. A watch the user can't sustain is worse than none — it produces false confidence that someone is watching.

• **The honest off-ramp.** Some questions don't need an investigation: if the question is "why do

customers churn," the answer is win/loss interviews and discovery, not a patent sweep. The advisor says so.

Application

This interactive skill asks **3 adaptive questions**, then offers **numbered, context-aware recommendations**.

Question 1: What's on your desk?

"What's the situation? Pick the closest, or describe your own:

1. **Suspected competitor move** — you think someone is building, entering, or repositioning 2. **An artifact to build or refresh** — TAM/SAM/SOM, battle card, positioning, ICP/personas, pricing analysis 3. **A margin or market-structure puzzle** — margins eroding, category shifting, entry decision 4. **Standing watch setup** — you want ongoing coverage, not a one-off answer"

Question 2: Adaptive follow-up

• **If 1 (suspected move):** "What tipped you off — a job posting, a pricing change, an exec's

post, a patent, a customer remark? (Whatever you saw is one discipline already flagging; we'll pick the independent channels that could corroborate it.)"

• **If 2 (artifact):** "Which artifact, and does a prior version exist to diff against?"
• **If 3 (structure puzzle):** "Is the question about the whole industry's structure, or one

company's position in it?"

• **If 4 (watch):** "Honestly, how much recurring time can you or your team commit — 30 minutes a

week, a half-day a month, a day a quarter?"

Question 3: Constraints

"Two quick constraints: free sources only or is paid tooling available, and any geographic focus? (Region changes which registries and statistics bureaus apply.)"

Then: Recommend

Synthesize and offer **3-5 numbered recommendations**, each naming: **discipline mix → cadence → executing skill → artifact fed**, with one line on when it's the right choice. Always show *why* the disciplines were chosen (the mapping-table logic), and include the off-ramp when it's honest. Handle single selection, combinations ("1 and 3"), and cust