Competitor Analysis

When to Use

Use when the user needs structured competitor research with Browserbase discovery, enrichment lanes, screenshots, comparison matrices, and a final HTML report.

_Source: browserbase/skills (MIT)._

Analyze a user's competitors. Uses Browserbase Search API for discovery and a 4-lane Plan→Research→Synthesize pattern for enrichment — outputting an HTML report with overview, per-competitor deep dives, a side-by-side feature/pricing matrix, and a chronological mentions feed.

Required: BROWSERBASE_API_KEY env var and the browse CLI installed (npm install -g browse).

First-run setup: On the first run you'll be prompted to approve browse cloud fetch, browse cloud search, cat, mkdir, sed, etc. Select *"Yes, and don't ask again for: browse cloud fetch:\"** (or equivalent) for each. To permanently approve, add these to your ~/.claude/settings.json under permissions.allow:

"Bash(browse:*)", "Bash(bunx:*)", "Bash(bun:*)", "Bash(node:*)",
"Bash(cat:*)", "Bash(mkdir:*)", "Bash(sed:*)", "Bash(head:*)", "Bash(tr:*)", "Bash(rm:*)"

Path rules: Always use full literal paths in Bash — NOT ~ or $HOME. Resolve the home directory once and use it everywhere. When building subagent prompts, replace {SKILL_DIR} with the full literal path.

Output directory: All output goes to ~/Desktop/{company_slug}_competitors_{YYYY-MM-DD}/. This directory contains one .md file per competitor plus the generated HTML views and CSV.

CRITICAL — Tool restrictions (applies to main agent AND all subagents):

• All web searches: use browse cloud search. NEVER WebSearch.
• All page fetches: use browse cloud fetch --allow-redirects (returns markdown by default; add --format raw if you need the original HTML, then pipe through sed ... | tr -s ' \n' to extract text). NEVER WebFetch. 1 MB response limit — fall back to browse get markdown (after browse open <url> --remote) for JS-heavy pages.
• All research output: subagents write one markdown file per competitor to {OUTPUT_DIR}/{competitor-slug}.md using bash heredoc. NEVER use the Write tool or python3 -c. See references/example-research.md for the file format.
• Report compilation: use node {SKILL_DIR}/scripts/compile_report.mjs {OUTPUT_DIR} --user-company "{user_company}" --open — generates index.html, competitors/*.html, matrix.html, mentions.html, results.csv in one step and opens overview.
• URL deduplication: node {SKILL_DIR}/scripts/list_urls.mjs /tmp --prefix competitor.
• Subagents must use ONLY the Bash tool.
• Main agent NEVER reads raw discovery JSON batch files.

CRITICAL — Minimize permission prompts:

• Subagents MUST batch ALL file writes into a SINGLE Bash call using chained heredocs.
• Batch ALL searches and ALL fetches into single Bash calls via && chaining.

Pipeline Overview

Follow these 8 steps in order. Do not skip or reorder.

1. User Company Research — Deeply understand the user's company, produce precise_category + category_include_keywords + exclusion_list
2. Depth Mode + Seed Input — Choose depth, accept optional seed competitor URLs
3. Discovery (3 parallel waves) — Wave A (alternatives), Wave B (precise category), Wave C (comparison-page graph via "X vs Y" title parsing)
4. Gate — scripts/gate_candidates.mjs fetches each candidate's hero text (via browse cloud fetch) and drops wrong-category URLs
5. Confirm enrichment set with the user — Present PASS / UNKNOWN / rejected-brand-matches via AskUserQuestion. User ticks the real ones, adds any the discovery missed. Skipping this step is wasteful because enrichment is expensive (25 subagents × depth budget) and the gate is imperfect (JS-heavy homepages, Cloudflare challenges, semantic-variant taglines)
6. Deep Enrichment (5 subagents per competitor in deep/deeper modes) — Marketing, Discussion, Social, News, Technical — each lane a separate subagent writing to partials/; then merge_partials.mjs consolidates. In deep/deeper modes, Step 5d adds a 6th Battle Card synthesis lane AFTER Step 5c fact-check completes — produces per-competitor Landmines / Objection Handlers / Talk Tracks grounded in cited evidence.
7. Screenshots — capture_screenshots.mjs via the browse CLI captures a 1280×800 homepage hero per competitor
8. HTML Report — Overview + per-competitor (with embedded hero screenshot + Battle Card card) + matrix + mentions views

Step 0: Setup Output Directory

OUTPUT_DIR=~/Desktop/{company_slug}_competitors_{YYYY-MM-DD}
mkdir -p "$OUTPUT_DIR"

Replace {company_slug} with the user's company name (lowercase, hyphenated) and {YYYY-MM-DD} with today's date. Pass {OUTPUT_DIR} as a full literal path to every subagent.

Clean up discovery batch files from prior runs:

rm -f /tmp/competitor_discovery_batch_*.json

**Re-runs must start from a clean `$