competitive-intel

A Claude Code plugin that runs autonomous competitive intelligence for B2B teams. Point it at your competitors and it tracks them across LinkedIn, news, user reviews, job postings, and regulatory signals, then writes an executive brief and per-competitor sales battlecards, on a schedule, and emails them to you.

Noncommercial use only (PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0). This plugin is the work of Brittany Slay. Use, adapt, and share it for noncommercial purposes with attribution intact. Commercial use - reselling, white-labeling, or productizing it - requires a license from Brittany Slay. See LICENSE.md.

Every run produces a dated executive brief and one sales battlecard per competitor. The brief reads like this:

# Competitive Intelligence Brief - Week of [date]

## Executive Summary
- [Competitor A] shipped usage-based pricing; expect it in deals by Q3.
- [Competitor B] is hiring 4 enterprise AEs in the Northeast: they're moving upmarket.
- Review sentiment on [Competitor A] dipped on onboarding complaints; a wedge for us.

## Moves this week
**[Competitor A] - new pricing page**
Signal: LinkedIn post + pricing page diff. Implication: undercuts our Team tier.
Recommended action: add a per-seat comparison to the pricing objection battlecard.

## Opportunities & threats for us
- Gap we can exploit: [Competitor B] has no SOC 2 page. Lead with trust in that segment.

Battlecards are one page each: how they position, where you win, the traps, and the exact rebuttals a rep can use live.

Anonymized template. The two config files ship as *.example.json describing a fictional company. Copy them, drop in your own details, and the whole system re-points at your market. Your real company_context.json and competitors.json are git-ignored so they never get committed.

What it does

• Fans out to five specialist agents - LinkedIn, news + community forums, G2/Capterra reviews, job postings, and regulatory/industry signals - each turning one public source into structured JSON.

• Synthesizes one executive brief with a week-over-week diff that surfaces exactly what changed since last week, framed from your company's angle.

• Writes a sales battlecard per competitor a rep can use live: how they position, where you win, the traps, and the rebuttals.

• Runs on a schedule and emails the results - a weekly full brief and a lightweight daily breaking-news check that only pings you when something scores ≥ 4/10.

• Needs no paid scraping key - free search by default (DuckDuckGo), with an optional Brave key for higher-quality results. The only required credential is a Gmail App Password for delivery.

Related MCP server: competlab-mcp-server

Install

Prerequisites: Claude Code, Node.js, and a Gmail account with an App Password.

# 1. Clone
git clone <your-repo-url> && cd competitive-intel

# 2. Install the MCP server deps
cd mcp/apify && npm install && cd ../..

# 3. Create your config from the examples
cp company_context.example.json company_context.json
cp competitors.example.json competitors.json
#   ...then edit both with your real details.

# 4. Set delivery env vars (add to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc)
export GMAIL_USER="you@gmail.com"
export GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD="xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx"
# export BRAVE_API_KEY="..."   # optional, improves search quality

# 5. Register the MCP server
claude mcp add competitive-intel node "$(pwd)/mcp/apify/index.js" \
  -e GMAIL_USER=$GMAIL_USER -e GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD=$GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD

# 6. Run it
claude
> /run-intel

See GUIDE.md for full setup, customization, and scheduling.

Example prompts

The competitive-analysis skill activates automatically when you ask competitor questions in plain language. Things people actually type:

• track what my competitors are doing this week

• build me a competitive brief on Competitor A and Competitor B

• monitor Competitor A on LinkedIn and in the news

• write a sales battlecard against Competitor B

• what are my competitors hiring for right now?

• set up weekly competitive intel and email it to me

• watch competitor reviews on G2 and Capterra

• what is Competitor A doing in AI this quarter?

• any breaking news on my competitors today?

• where can we win against Competitor B in a live deal?

You can also drive it explicitly:

/run-intel                    # Full cycle - all agents, brief, battlecards, email
/run-intel focus:product      # LinkedIn + news only - fast product check
/run-intel focus:hiring       # Hiring tracker only
/run-intel focus:regulatory   # Regulatory radar only
/run-intel no-email           # Run everything, skip email
/daily-alert                  # Manual breaking-news check

What's inside

Configuration

No paid scraping key required. Search uses DuckDuckGo by default; crawling uses native HTTP fetch; LinkedIn coverage is best-effort via search-indexed posts. Two files drive all quality - keep them current:

• company_context.json - your positioning, differentiators, win/loss themes, ICP. Injected into every brief and battlecard.

• competitors.json - who to track, plus a free-text notes field per competitor that gives the agents starting context.

A note on ethics

This tool reads publicly available information: public posts, press, published reviews, public job listings. It does not scrape private data, bypass logins, or collect personal contact information. Keep it that way. See PRIVACY.md.

License

Noncommercial use only (PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0). Commercial use requires a license from Brittany Slay. See LICENSE.md.

Built by Brittany Slay, a B2B marketing leader who builds AI-native tools. More free Claude skills at brittanyslay.com/skills. Want a competitive-intel program or an AI-native marketing function built for real? Get in touch.