Competitor Watch

A self-running competitor watch for your product. Every morning the [[.agents/competitor-scout]] visits each rival's website, pricing page, changelog, news, and social, writes a dated snapshot report, compares it to the previous one, and records exactly what changed. The [[dashboard]] turns all of that into a glanceable UI: where each competitor stands today, the archive of past reports, and a live "What changed" feed.

Competitive intel usually rots in a stale slide deck. Here it is a daily forcing function owned by an agent, and every observation lands as a real file you can open, diff, and forward.

The example you're looking at

This template ships pre-filled with a worked example so you can see the shape of everything before connecting your own market: it is October–November 2004, you ship the iPod, and the scout is watching five MP3-player rivals — Creative's Zen line, Sony's Network Walkman, Rio, the Dell DJ, and iRiver.

Every example file is historical fiction built on real 2004 events (Creative's "$100M war on the iPod", the Rio Carbon, Sony's ATRAC-only stumble). Example files are prefixed EXAMPLE-, and the dashboard says clearly that it is showing the example. Your first real scan replaces all of it.

How it works

1. Scan — the competitor-scout runs daily at 08:00 via the daily-competitor-scan job. For each folder under competitors/ it reads the tracked surfaces: positioning, pricing, product, blog, changelog/docs, news, and social.
2. Report — it writes competitors/<slug>/YYYY-MM-DD.md, a structured snapshot with sources.
3. Diff — it compares the new snapshot to the previous one and classifies each change (pricing / product / messaging / news / funding…) as major, minor, or info.
4. Publish — it rewrites dashboard/data.js, so the [[dashboard]] always shows the current summaries and the "What changed" feed.
5. Log — it appends one line to the Scan log at the bottom of this page.

Make it yours

Step 1. Decide your product's name and the 3–8 competitors that actually matter to it.

Step 2. Open the AI panel on this page, paste the prompt below, fill in the two placeholders, and run it.

You are the Competitor Scout for this Competitor Watch cabinet.

My product: <YOUR PRODUCT — one line on what it is and who it's for>
My competitors: <LIST — name + homepage URL for each, 3 to 8 of them>

Set the cabinet up for my market:

1. Delete the 2004 iPod example: remove the five example folders under
   `competitors/` (creative-zen, sony-network-walkman, rio, dell-dj, iriver)
   and the EXAMPLE scan-log lines at the bottom of index.md.
2. For each of my competitors, create `competitors/<slug>/index.md` — the
   durable profile: who they are, where my product differs, what to watch.
   Research the real current facts with WebFetch/WebSearch; never invent.
3. Rewrite the "Who we track" table below with my roster.
4. Rewrite `dashboard/data.js` (keep it a valid `window.__CI_DATA__ = {...};`
   assignment, same schema, and remove the `_note` example banner) with a
   baseline entry per competitor, and set `product` to my product's name.
5. Run the first full scan: today's snapshot for every competitor, and a
   baseline line in the Scan log.

Step 3. From tomorrow, the 08:00 job keeps it fresh on its own. Open the dashboard each morning and read the "What changed" tab in under a minute.

Until you run the bootstrap, the daily job leaves the example alone and reminds you it is still showing 2004.

Who we track (the example roster)

Competitor	What they are	Why they matter to the iPod
[[competitors/creative-zen]]	Creative's Zen / NOMAD player line	The self-declared challenger — just pledged $100M to "the MP3 war"
[[competitors/sony-network-walkman]]	Sony's hard-disk Walkman + Connect store	The brand that owned portable audio for 25 years, betting on ATRAC
[[competitors/rio]]	Rio's flash and microdrive players	The Rio Carbon undercuts iPod mini on size and battery
[[competitors/dell-dj]]	Dell's Digital Jukebox	Wins on price and Dell's direct channel, not on design
[[competitors/iriver]]	iRiver's flash/HDD players	The spec-sheet champion, now allied with MSN Music

The team

• [[.agents/competitor-scout]] — Competitor Scout. Runs the daily scan, writes the reports, diffs them, and keeps the dashboard fresh. It doesn't set strategy — it reports what's true and flags what moved.

What's inside

• Dashboard — the one page: your product's hero card at the top, overview cards per competitor (with product images from dashboard/img/), and the "What changed" feed. Reads dashboard/data.js.
• competitors/<slug>/ — one folder per rival: index.md (the durable profile) plus dated snapshot reports.
• Daily Competitor Scan — the one routine, 08:00 every day.

Scan log

• EXAMPLE 2004-10-25 — Baseline established for all five competitors. Notable at baseline: Sony's NW-HD1 still ships without native MP3 playback, the Rio Carbon (5GB, $249) is drawing "thinner than iPod mini" reviews, and Dell has quietly cut the DJ 20 to $249. — competitor-scout
• EXAMPLE 2004-11-16 — Loudest scan of the quarter. Creative declared a "$100M MP3 war" on the iPod (Sim Wong Hoo, Nov 16 press event) and put the Zen Micro (5GB, 10 colours, $249) at the centre of it — booked major (messaging + product). MSN Music left beta (Nov 11), lighting up the PlaysForSure side of the market — booked major (news) against iRiver and Dell, which both lean on it. Sony, Rio: no material change (Sony's rumoured MP3-native firmware for the NW-HD1 still unannounced — carried as "watch"). — competitor-scout