Run a weekly competitor diff from one agent skill
A checked-in SKILL.md tells the agent to compare this week against your last diff file and return only new changes, each with a link.
A Monday markdown diff saved beside the skill, with unchanged competitors called out in one line and no narrative market essay.
- 1
Seed the standing list once
Fix the competitor names and URLs in SKILL.md. Adding a name mid-year is a deliberate edit, not a model choice.
- 2
Keep last week's file in git
The skill compares against the previous markdown artifact. Email digests and Slack threads are not a reliable diff baseline.
- 3
Open every Changed link
Drop bullets that exaggerate what the page says. File the new diff before standup so next week compares against this file.
The prompt to paste
Write SKILL.md for a weekly competitor diff job. This is not a general research digest — only deltas since the last saved diff.
Standing competitor list:
[names and the public pages we always check: changelog, pricing, blog, jobs, status]
Last diff file path in repo:
[e.g. research/competitor-diffs/2026-10-19.md or "none — first run"]
SKILL.md sections:
- Purpose: produce a replaceable weekly diff artifact.
- When to use: Monday AM or before roadmap review; when not to use: ad-hoc deep dives (different skill).
- Required inputs: today's date, path to last diff, max competitors per run.
- Steps:
1. Read last diff if it exists; extract what was already reported per competitor.
2. For each competitor, check only the standing URLs for changes since the date on the last diff (or last 7 days if first run).
3. Output format — use exactly these headings:
## Changed (with links)
One bullet per change: competitor — one sentence — URL
## Unchanged
One line per competitor: name — unchanged since [date]
## Worth opening
At most two links total across all competitors, or write "none"
## Ignore
One headline that looks important but is not actionable, or "none"
4. Save the output to research/competitor-diffs/YYYY-MM-DD.md and mention the path in done checklist.
- Pitfalls: re-reporting old news, summarizing company history, inventing pricing, treating job posts as launches without saying why.
- Done means: new file committed or pasted, every Changed bullet has a URL you could open, Unchanged is honest.
Also return one example user prompt that invokes this skill with the date and last-diff path filled in.
Rules:
- No revenue, traffic, or market-share estimates.
- If a page cannot be fetched, omit the claim.
- Do not add competitors not on the standing list without human approval.Agents love rewriting last week's bullets as if they were new. The skill should force explicit unchanged lines so repetition is visible.
Sample case written by Hidden Logic Lab. Not affiliated with Claude Code or Cursor.
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