version: "1.0.0" name: Research A Competitor description: Read one rival's page and turn it into a sharp one-page operator's read — how they position, what they appear to charge, the offers they lead with, and where the openings are for YOUR business. One competitor, one page-read, built from the live web. No accounts or files needed. triggers:

• research a competitor
• check out this competitor
• read this rival's website
• what is this competitor charging
• how does this competitor position themselves
• size up this competitor
• look at this competitor's pricing
• competitor read

function_slot: research requires_driver: firecrawl requires_credential: none data_path: fetch_rest status: active

Research A Competitor

You take one rival's URL and hand the owner a single sharp page: how that competitor positions, what they appear to charge, the offers they lead with, and where the real openings are for THIS owner's business. It reads like a switched-on operator sized them up in five minutes, not like a market report.

This skill reads the live web. It needs an internet connection to pull the competitor's page. There are no accounts to connect and no key to enter: the read works on day one. If there's no connection, say so plainly and offer to work from anything the owner can paste instead.

The convention this follows is `knowledge/research-method.md` — read its scope clamp before you fetch. One competitor, one page-read. Stay inside scrape and search; never reach for bulk crawl, whole-site mapping, or autonomous extraction.

Step 0 — Anchor on THIS owner

A competitor read is only useful relative to the owner it's for. Before you fetch anything, know two things:

• Who the owner is — their trade, their patch, who they serve. Pull this

from the business profile if one exists; if not, ask in one line ("quick one: what do you do and where, so I can read this rival against you?").

• The one rival URL — the page the owner wants read. One page. If they

hand you a bare business name instead of a link, use firecrawl-search on the name to find their main page, confirm it's the right business, then read that one page.

Step 1 — Read the rival's page

Use the firecrawl-scrape skill on the single URL to pull clean content. That one page (usually a home or services/pricing page) is the source. If the page the owner gave is thin, you may run one firecrawl-search on the business name to surface their pricing or reviews page, then read that. Keep it to one page-read: do not walk the whole site.

If the fetch is slow, blocked, or comes back empty, don't stall and don't guess. Say so ("couldn't get a clean read of that page") and offer the fallback: "paste me what's on their site and I'll read it the same way."

Read only what's on the page. If a competitor's price isn't published, the honest line is "no public pricing — they make you ask," which is itself a finding. Never invent a number or a claim that isn't there.

Step 2 — Synthesise the one-page read

Turn the page into four parts. Sharp, specific, and always anchored to something actually on the page. This rival is one entry on the owner's real-alternatives list (business-method.md §14), which also includes "do nothing" and DIY; openings are attributes the owner can truthfully claim that this rival can't, stated to pass the only-we rubric (§14).

1. How they position. The promise they lead with and who they're talking

to, in their own words. Quote the headline or hero line if it's telling.

1. What they appear to charge. Published prices, packages, or "from $X"

signals. If pricing is hidden, say so and note what that implies (quote-only, premium-by-design, or simply not shown).

1. The offers they lead with. The packages, guarantees, free trials,

bundles, or hooks on the page — what they're using to win the click.

1. The openings for this owner. Open with the 10-second read

(business-method.md §7.6): logos stripped, could a stranger tell this rival's offer from the owner's? If not, the biggest opening is the whole offer — the Category-of-One rebuild (§7.1, via build-brand-strategy and the offer skills), not a tweak. Then two or three places where THIS owner can stand apart: an angle the rival under-plays, a proof point the owner has and they don't, a segment the rival ignores. Each opening is framed as a move the owner can make, tied to what you saw on the page.

Findability lens (a light add, when it's relevant). While you're on the rival's page, note how they're set up to get found, not just to convert: what services/topics they give a dedicated page that the owner doesn't (a content gap), and whether their page reads as built for search (a clear service+place title, reviews on the page, a real CTA). Surface one or two of these as openings where they're genuinely useful. This is the rival read; the owner's own-site findability audit is get-found-online (see the hand-over). Keep it to what's on the one page, no crawling.

Step 3 — Hand it over

Show the read, name the URL it came from, and point to the one or two openings worth acting on first. If the owner wants, offer to save it to research/<competitor-name>-read.md.

Then offer the natural next step in plain language, without overselling:

Want me to turn the strongest opening into a positioning line or a content

angle for you? That's build-brand-strategy, which walks the full

positioning ladder. If a content gap stood out, get-found-online audits YOUR

own site and local search presence and hands you a fix list. And once your CRM

is connected, I can keep a read like this on file against the right account so

it's there next time you're pitching head to head.

Output shape — positive-only, no em dashes

The read is customer-facing output: it follows the positive-only rule and uses no em dashes (use commas, colons, parentheses, or separate sentences).

Frame the owner's openings as forward moves, never as what they lack. Naming a rival's gap is fair game as a sharp observation ("they bury their pricing, so a clear up-front price page would beat them on trust"). Framing the owner by absence is not ("you don't have X yet"). Lead with the result the owner can go get.

Template:

Competitor read: [Rival name]  (from [URL])
 
How they position:
  [one or two lines, their promise + who it's for, quoting the page]
 
What they appear to charge:
  [published prices / packages, or "no public pricing, quote-only"]
 
Offers they lead with:
  • [offer / hook 1]
  • [offer / hook 2]
 
Openings for you:
  1. [a move the owner can make, tied to the page]
  2. [a second move]

Hard rules

• ❌ One competitor, one page-read. No crawling the whole site, no mapping every

URL, no autonomous extraction (those need a paid key and aren't keyless).

• ❌ Don't invent prices, offers, or claims that aren't on the page. "Not

published" is a real, useful finding.

• ❌ Don't frame the owner by what they lack. Openings are forward moves.
• ✅ Confirm the page is actually the right competitor before leaning on it.
• ✅ Quote the page where the exact words matter, so the owner trusts the read.
• ✅ If the fetch fails, say so and offer to read pasted content instead.