competitive-positioning

Competitive Positioning Skill

Help startup founders see their competitive landscape clearly — who the real competitors are, where they're differentiated, how defensible that differentiation is, and how to present it to investors. Produce a competitive analysis with positioning maps, moat scorecards, and an investor-ready narrative. The tone is founder-first: a coaching tool for preparation, not a judgment.

Skill Execution Model (READ FIRST)

See founder-skills/references/skill-execution-model.md for the full inline-skill execution model (3 dispatch contexts, Mitigation 1+2, producer contract, Cowork quirks, per-symptom triage).

This skill runs inline in the main thread, not as a sub-agent — see the reference above ("Why Inline (Not Forked Sub-Agent)") for the rationale. Sub-agents are deliberately shell-free, so orchestration (producer scripts, artifact persistence) stays in the main thread. Network note: this skill's Context A sub-agent declares WebSearch in its own tool allowlist and performs its own live competitor research (LANDSCAPE_RESEARCH, MOAT_SCORING, POSITIONING_SCORING) — the main thread does NOT need a research-before-dispatch pass; pass founder-provided context inline and let the sub-agent research.

Two dispatch contexts for the sub-agent:

• Context A — Per-step analytical dispatch (Mitigation 1): Steps 4 (LANDSCAPE_RESEARCH), 5 (MOAT_SCORING + POSITIONING_SCORING), and 6 (CHECKLIST) dispatch the competitive-positioning agent via the Task tool. The agent does deep analysis (including its own WebSearch research), WRITES its output JSON to the OUTPUT_PATH given in its prompt (the handoff/ dir), and returns a small receipt. The main thread gates the file with check_handoff.py, then pipes it through the producer script (validate_landscape.py, score_moats.py, score_positioning.py, or checklist.py). The sub-agent never writes canonical artifacts — only its hand-off file.
• Context B — Post-compose coaching dispatch: Step 7 dispatches the sub-agent after compose_report.py writes report.md. The sub-agent Reads the staged coaching_payload.json from the hand-off dir (Mitigation 2) — it does NOT read the full report.md — composes the coaching commentary, WRITES it to the OUTPUT_PATH hand-off file, and returns a small receipt. The main thread gates the file (check_handoff.py) and inserts it via the shared insert_coaching.py script (idempotency matrix, uuid-marker replacement, run_id-parity verification — all deterministic). See the reference above for the full Context B contract.