Set up
Try a plugin
The Product Management plugin ships with /competitive-brief and other market-analysis skills as a starting point, already structured to build a matrix and score gaps. If your admin manages plugins and it's not available yet, skip this; nothing below requires it.
Connect your tools
Claude Cowork is more powerful when it works directly with your systems. You control permissions and access. Learn about tool access(opens in new tab).
Navigate to Customize → Connectors in Cowork to set up.
Set your working folder
Drag the files you'll use (your product overview doc, last quarter's positioning one-pager, any competitor screenshots or pricing PDFs you've already collected) into one folder on your machine, then point Cowork at it. Cowork reads from it and writes the matrix and gap brief back to it. If you refresh this every quarter, create a Cowork project(opens in new tab) from that folder so your competitor list, instructions, and memory stay attached.
The prompt
Copy this into Claude Cowork
Build a competitive teardown of Acme and Northwind against us. Browse their product, docs, changelog, pricing page, and recent reviews, and produce a feature and positioning matrix. Call out where we clearly win, where we're exposed, and everything they shipped last quarter that we haven't answered.
Why this works
Name the competitors, not the category. Two or three named products keeps the research targeted and the matrix readable; "the market" turns into a survey nobody finishes.
List the sources to browse. "Product, docs, changelog, pricing page, and recent reviews" sets the research scope so the teardown covers what they ship, what they charge, and what customers actually say.
Use internal sources, not your website. "Our docs and Figma" means your column in the matrix reflects what you've actually built and designed, not what marketing says on the website.
Ask what still needs a response. "Everything they shipped last quarter that we haven't answered" turns the changelog into a backlog conversation, separate from the evergreen positioning.
Get a better draft
Add an example to match. Drop an example you like into the folder and Cowork matches your structure and voice.
Ask it to flag uncertainty. Add "flag anything you're not confident about" so you know where to look first when you review the draft.
Make Cowork work for you
A plugin skill is a starting point — customize it with your own practices and expertise. A few minutes of conversation and it runs with your standards from then on.
Make what we've done in this task so far into a skill, or edit the /competitive-brief skill with my feedback.
Make it repeatable
Refresh it every quarter
Competitors keep shipping after you've looked. Type /schedule in the prompt, or open Scheduled in the Cowork sidebar, and the customized skill re-browses the competitor set and rewrites the matrix on a weekly check.
/schedule Every Monday at 9am, if a new quarter folder exists under Product/competitive, run /competitive-brief, write the matrix and gap brief there, and post a one-line summary of new exposed cells.
Runs /competitive-brief against the standing competitor set and writes the refreshed matrix and unanswered-ships list to the quarter's folder.
Share with your teammates
Your customized /competitive-brief now carries your competitor set, your matrix taxonomy, and your scoring language. Share it so PMs, marketers, and sellers all read the market against the same grid, and the "where are we exposed" conversation starts from one source of truth.