/pricing-packaging-tracker

name: pricing-packaging-tracker
argument-hint: "[competitor set, and prior capture if one exists]"
description: "Track competitor pricing and packaging as a diffable time series. Use when monitoring tiers, gates, limits, and price moves on a monthly or quarterly cadence."
intent: >-
  Capture competitor public pricing pages into a stable schema, diff against the prior capture, and
  report tier changes, price moves, feature-gate shifts, and packaging restructures with URLs and
  dates — because packaging changes signal strategy earlier than price changes do.
type: workflow
theme: market-intelligence
best_for:
  - "Keeping battle-card pricing sections current without manual screenshot archaeology"
  - "Catching packaging restructures — the earliest public signal of a strategy shift"
  - "Building the pricing time series that grounds your own pricing decisions"
scenarios:
  - "Baseline the pricing pages of our four main competitors, then track monthly"
  - "Did anyone in our space change pricing or packaging this quarter?"
estimated_time: "15-30 min per run"

Pricing & Packaging Tracker

Purpose

Track competitor pricing and packaging as a **diffable time series**, not a screenshot: **capture (or diff) → structure changes → price changes → signals → next-step options.** The stable capture schema is the point — run N diffs against run N-1, so the report is what *moved*, with evidence. And the skill watches structure as closely as numbers, because packaging changes (gates, limits, tier restructures) usually signal strategy earlier than price changes do: a tier that disappears telegraphs a move upmarket months before the price list admits it.

Input

**Works best with:** the competitor set to track (or the snapshot they came from), and the prior pricing capture if one exists — that's what turns this run into a delta report. **Also useful:** your own pricing context, if the comparison should include you.

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.** With no prior capture the skill runs **baseline mode**: full capture per competitor, and the delta value starts next run. With no competitor list, it asks — that's one of its two budget questions.

**Example invocation:** `Pricing tracker on [Competitor A], [Competitor B], [Competitor C] — prior capture from April pasted below.`

Key Concepts

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

contract — question budget of 2, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, Just Enough Mode, stable schema, 4-option Final Step. Discipline: SIGINT (pricing pages, site diffs) with FININT corroboration — see [`intelligence-collection-disciplines`](../intelligence-collection-disciplines/SKILL.md).

• **Time series, not screenshot.** A single capture is trivia; the sequence is intelligence. The

schema never drifts between runs, because diffability is the entire value.

• **Structure over numbers.** Record tiers, billing units, feature gates, usage limits, free-tier

boundaries, and enterprise-floor signals — not just prices. The gate moves first; the price follows.

• **"Contact sales" is data, honestly labeled.** Where pricing is opaque, track what *is* public

(editions, gates, published floors) and mark the rest. Infer only with labels; never invent prices, tiers, limits, discounts, or negotiated figures.

• **When NOT to use:** you need pricing *strategy* advice →

[`finance-based-pricing-advisor`](../finance-based-pricing-advisor/SKILL.md) (this tracks the market; it doesn't set your price); pricing is fully opaque across the whole set → expect thin results, and consider [`voice-of-customer-miner`](../voice-of-customer-miner/SKILL.md) or win/loss evidence instead.

Application

1. **Determine mode.** Prior capture provided → delta mode (report changes only). None → baseline mode (full capture, then stop). 2. **Credit inline context**, then ask only the unanswered questions (max 2): 1. Which competitors' pricing should I track? 2. Prior capture to diff against, or is this the baseline? 3. **Capture from live pricing pages** — plan-comparison pages, published rate cards, credible pricing-change coverage — with URL and as-of date per competitor. 4. **Emit the schema below exactly** — diffability is the point.

Output schema (do not reorder)

~~~markdown

Pricing Capture / Delta Report

1. Run Header

**Competitor set:** | **Prior capture date:** [or "baseline run"] | **This run date:**

2. Pricing Capture (per competitor)

[Competitor] — [pricing page URL, as-of date]

• **Tiers:** [name: price / unit / billing terms, one bullet each]
• **Key gates:** [which capabilities gate which tier, 2-4 bullets]
• **Usage limits:** [the limits that matter, 1-2 bullets]
• **Free tier / trial:** [boundary, 1 bullet]
• **Enterprise signals:** [published floors, "contact sales" scope]

(Baseline mode: full capture per competitor. Delta mode: this section only for competitors with changes.)

3. Changes Since Last Capture (Delta Mode)

[Competitor] — [4 to 8 word change summary]

• **Then / Now:** [old -> new, labeled Fact]
• **Evidence:** [URL, date]
• **Reading:** [Inference — repositioning, monetization push, response to whom?]

If nothing changed: "No pricing or packaging changes this cycle."

4. Signals

• [Cross-competitor patterns: direction of the market's pricing, labeled]
• [Implications for your pricing or battle cards: 2-3 bullets]

Assumptions to Validate

• [Assumption 1] / [Assumption 2] / [Assumption 3]

~~~

A copy/paste fill-in version of this schema, with quality checks, lives in [`template.md`](template.md).

Final Step (offer exactly 4 options)

1. Update battle card pricing sections from these changes ([`battle-card-builder`](../