Competitor Intelligence Brief
Monitor your competitors' feeds and newsletters daily — get briefed on what they shipped, messaging changes, and gaps you could fill.
Your competitors ship features, change pricing, and pivot messaging — and you find out weeks later from a customer who switched. By then it's too late to respond.
Who it's for: product managers tracking competitor releases, marketing teams monitoring messaging shifts, founders in fast-moving markets, sales teams needing competitive updates, strategy leads briefing leadership
Example
"Monitor our 5 competitors' feeds and newsletters daily" → Daily brief summarizing what they shipped, messaging changes detected, and specific content angles and positioning gaps you could exploit this week
CLAUDE.md Template
New here? 3-minute setup guide → | Already set up? Copy the template below.
npx ccplaybooks add competitor-intelligence-brief# Competitor Intelligence Brief
## Your Role
You monitor competitors' public feeds, newsletters, and blogs daily. You produce concise intelligence briefs that highlight what changed, why it matters, and what opportunities it creates.
## Competitors to Track
### Competitor 1
- Name: [COMPETITOR NAME]
- X: @[HANDLE]
- Newsletter: [URL]
- Blog: [URL]Get new playbooks like this one
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What This Does
Reads your competitors' feeds and newsletters daily and writes you a brief on what they shipped, what messaging changed, and where they left a gap you could fill. Instead of manually checking 5-10 competitor feeds, you get a single document with everything that matters.
Every brief ends with an "Opportunities" section — specific content angles or positioning moves you could act on this week.
Prerequisites
- A list of competitor X handles, Substack/newsletter URLs, and/or blog URLs
- Claude scheduled tasks enabled
- Optional: MCP connections for deeper API access
Quick Start
Step 1: Create Your Project Folder
mkdir -p ~/competitor-intel
Step 2: Download the Template
Click Download above, then:
mv ~/Downloads/CLAUDE.md ~/competitor-intel/
Step 3: Add Your Competitors
Open CLAUDE.md and list your competitors' X handles, newsletter URLs, and blog URLs.
Step 4: Set Up the Schedule
cd ~/competitor-intel
claude
Say: "Schedule this to run every morning at 7am. Check my competitors and write the daily brief."
How It Works
Each day, Claude:
- Checks each competitor's live feeds (X, blog, newsletter)
- Notes any new content, product updates, pricing changes, new positioning, or messaging shifts
- Writes a short brief per competitor: what they did, why it matters, and whether it opens a gap
- Adds an "Opportunities" section with specific, actionable moves you could make
- Appends everything to
/competitor-intel.mdwith today's date
What Gets Tracked
| Signal | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| New content | Topics they're doubling down on |
| Product updates | Features they're shipping, direction they're heading |
| Pricing changes | Market positioning shifts |
| New messaging | How they're talking about themselves differently |
| Tone shifts | Going more casual? More enterprise? |
| Gaps | Topics they're ignoring that you could own |
Example Output
# Competitor Intel — 2026-03-08
## @competitor_a
- Published a thread on "why we're going all-in on AI agents"
- Shifted messaging from "automation" to "autonomous workflows"
- Why it matters: They're repositioning for a higher-end market
- Gap: They're not talking about implementation for solopreneurs
## @competitor_b
- Launched a new free tier with limited features
- Newsletter focused on "the death of courses"
- Why it matters: Undercutting on price, moving to freemium
- Gap: No mention of ROI or results — all features, no outcomes
## Opportunities
- Content angle: "AI agents for solopreneurs" — competitor A
abandoned this positioning
- Counter-narrative: "Courses aren't dead, bad courses are"
— directly responds to competitor B's newsletter
- Pricing content: Write about value-based pricing while
competitor B races to the bottom
Tips
- Start with 3-5 competitors — too many and the brief becomes noise
- Include indirect competitors — people competing for your audience's attention, not just your market
- Act on opportunities weekly — review the week's briefs every Friday and pick 1-2 moves
- Track patterns over time — individual days are noisy, but monthly trends reveal real strategy shifts