Maintain a cited competitive-change watch
A weekly change brief tracks material product, pricing, positioning, hiring, and customer signals with dates and confidence.
The problem
Competitive intelligence is episodic, anecdotal, and quickly polluted by sales hearsay or stale web pages.
What you get
A working system with the steps, tools, checkpoints, and expected return made explicit.
- Setup
- 120 minutes
- Back each week
- 4 hours
- Difficulty
- agentic
Expected return
The working case
A planning estimate, not a guaranteed result. Measure the first four weeks against your own baseline.
192
hours returned per year
At 4 hours/week across 48 working weeks.
1
week to earn back setup
Compare the setup estimate with the weekly time returned.
Operating contract
Input
The source material, constraints, and examples a human would need to do this work well.
Checkpoint
A person reviews judgment calls, sensitive content, unfamiliar tools, and irreversible actions.
Success signal
Track time returned, corrections required, and exceptions. Keep it only if the measured result compounds.
Before you start
- ·Named competitor set
- ·An internal review owner
The steps
- 01
Define the named competitor set, approved public sources, tracked questions, and material-change threshold.
- 02
Capture dated source snapshots and compare them with the previous period.
- 03
Summarize only observable changes and separate inference.
Copy this prompt
Report material competitor changes since [date]. For each: observed change, exact source, publication/capture date, why it may matter, confidence, and what remains inference. Do not repeat unverified claims. Sources: [snapshots]
- 04
Strategy or product marketing reviews before internal distribution.
What it runs on
- Visualping
Public page change detection.
- Perplexity
Cited current research.
- Notion
Dated intelligence log.
Where this goes wrong
- Use only lawful public sources; no impersonation or unauthorized access.
- Competitor movement does not automatically dictate your roadmap.
Definition of done
Run it for four weeks. Then make it earn its place.
- □ Baseline the manual time before launch.
- □ Keep a human approval step for consequential output.
- □ Record corrections and exceptions, not just successes.
- □ Expand, revise, or retire it after the first review.
Build the system around it
Related workflows
If this one stops working, tell us. Three reports in a month and it leaves the library until a person has looked at it again.