/competitor-monitoring

name: competitor-monitoring
description: When the user wants to set up ongoing tracking of competitor activity — pricing changes, feature launches, hiring signals, content, or public mentions. Also use when the user mentions "track competitors", "what are competitors doing", "competitor alerts", or "market watch".
related: [competitive-analysis, daily-product-digest, review-mining, market-research]
reads: [startup-context]

Competitor Monitoring

When to Use

• Founder wants to know when competitors change pricing, ship features, or raise funding
• Founder wants a recurring "what changed this week" scan of competitor activity
• Founder wants to detect strategic shifts from competitor job postings, blog posts, or product updates
• Founder wants to stay informed without manually checking 10 websites daily

This is the **recurring sibling** of `competitive-analysis` (one-time deep dive). Use this skill for ongoing monitoring, not initial research.

Context Required

• List of 3-7 competitors to track (names, websites, product URLs)
• What the founder cares about most (pricing, features, positioning, hiring, funding, content)
• Monitoring frequency (weekly recommended for early-stage, biweekly for established markets)
• The founder's own positioning (to flag threats and opportunities)

Workflow

1. **Define the monitoring surface** — for each competitor, identify what to watch:

• **Pricing page** — plan changes, new tiers, free plan adjustments
• **Changelog / release notes** — new features, deprecations, platform shifts
• **Job postings** — engineering roles signal product direction, sales roles signal GTM shifts, exec hires signal strategy changes
• **Blog / content** — new positioning, case studies (reveal target customers), thought leadership pivots
• **Social media** — founder posts, company announcements, community reactions
• **Review sites** — new reviews on G2, Capterra, Trustpilot (sentiment shifts)
• **Funding / press** — Crunchbase alerts, press releases, media coverage

2. **Set up the monitoring stack** — recommend tools and manual checks:

• **Automated:** Google Alerts (brand mentions), Visualping or ChangeTower (page change detection), Crunchbase alerts (funding), LinkedIn job alerts
• **Manual weekly scan:** pricing pages, changelogs, recent blog posts, latest job postings
• **Quarterly deep dive:** full `competitive-analysis` refresh

3. **Run the scan** — check all sources for the monitoring period and flag changes. 4. **Analyze signals** — for each change detected:

• What changed (factual description)
• What it signals (interpretation — are they moving upmarket? entering your segment? struggling with churn?)
• Threat level (none / watch / respond / urgent)
• Recommended action (if any)

5. **Generate the report** — produce a concise weekly/biweekly competitor intel brief.

Output Format

## Competitor Intel Brief — Week of [Date]

### Summary
[1-2 sentence overview: "Quiet week. Competitor A shipped a free tier. No pricing changes elsewhere."]

### Changes Detected

**[Competitor A]**
- **What changed:** [factual description]
- **Signal:** [what this likely means strategically]
- **Threat level:** [None / Watch / Respond / Urgent]
- **Recommended action:** [what to do, if anything]

**[Competitor B]**
- No changes detected this period.

### Job Posting Signals
| Competitor | New Roles | Signal |
|-----------|-----------|--------|
| [A] | 3 enterprise AEs, VP Sales | Moving upmarket |
| [B] | ML engineer, data scientist | Building AI features |

### Emerging Patterns
- [Pattern observed across multiple competitors or over time]

### Action Items
- [ ] [Specific action for the founder]

Frameworks & Best Practices

**Reading job postings as strategy signals:** | Role Type | What It Signals | |-----------|----------------| | Enterprise AEs / Sales Engineers | Moving upmarket or launching enterprise tier | | DevRel / Community Manager | Investing in developer ecosystem or community-led growth | | ML/AI Engineers | Building AI features or data products | | International roles / specific geo | Expanding to new markets | | Product Marketing Manager | Repositioning or launching new product lines | | Head of Partnerships | Platform/ecosystem strategy | | Lots of support hires | Scaling fast or struggling with quality |

**Threat level framework:**

• **None:** Routine activity, no impact on you
• **Watch:** Interesting move, could affect you in 3-6 months — add to next strategy discussion
• **Respond:** Directly affects your positioning, pricing, or target market — needs a plan within 2 weeks
• **Urgent:** Launches directly competing feature, undercuts your pricing, or targets your exact ICP — needs immediate response

**Common mistakes:**

• Monitoring too many competitors (pick 3-5, not 15)
• Reacting to every move instead of identifying patterns
• Confusing competitor activity with competitor success (they shipped a feature — doesn't mean it works)
• Ignoring indirect competitors and new entrants
• Not archiving snapshots (you'll want to see how their pricing page looked 6 months ago)

Related Skills

• `competitive-analysis` — for the initial deep dive and periodic refresh
• `daily-product-digest` — for broader market monitoring beyond specific competitors
• `review-mining` — for tracking competitor sentiment on review platforms
• `market-research` — for understanding market shifts driving competitor behavior

Examples

**Prompt:** "Set up competitor monitoring for our 4 main competitors in the email marketing space."

**Good output includes:** Monitoring surface for each competitor (pricing pages, changelogs, job boards, blogs), recommended tool stack for automated alerts, and a template for the weekly intel brief.

**Prompt:** "What have our competitors been up to this week?"

**Good output includes:** Scan of changelogs, pricing pages, blog posts, job postings, and social accounts for each trac