battle-card-builder
Research and draft a competitive battle card from public evidence — every claim labeled and sourced. Use when a rep needs a field-action card, not a research report.
Author
Category
Product DesignInstall
Download and extract to your skills directory
Copy command and send to AI Agent for auto-install:
Battle Card Builder
Purpose
Build a field-action competitive battle card from public evidence: use or gather evidence → search
plan (if gathering) → draft card with per-claim labels → appendix → next-step options. A battle
card is the artifact a rep opens mid-deal, not a research report — it must fit thirty seconds, every
claim must survive being said out loud to a hostile audience, and every claim therefore carries a
source URL, a date, and a Fact/Inference/Assumption label. Most battle cards in the wild are unlabeled
inference; this skill exists because of what it costs a rep when one of those turns out wrong.
Input
Works best with: your product and its primary differentiation, and the one competitor this
card targets.
Also useful: the deal context (segment, buyer, common objections or the loss reason that triggered
this card), and any competitive-research-snapshot orcompetitive-intel-watch output in session — the skill uses
existing evidence and searches only for gaps and anything older than one quarter.
Input supplied inline with the invocation — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an
appended ARGUMENTS: line — counts as answers already given. Use it against the question budget;
don't re-ask.
Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The skill opens with at most 3 questions (product +
competitor, segment + buyer, triggering objection) and proceeds on labeled assumptions if they go
unanswered.
Example invocation: Build a battle card: our workflow platform vs [Competitor A], mid-market ops
buyers — triggered by three straight losses on "their integrations are deeper."
Key Concepts
autonomous-investigationcontract — question budget of 3, search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, Just Enough
Mode, stable schema, 4-option Final Step.
going stale) + OSINT (review mining for objection handling) + HUMINT (win/loss ground truth when
you have it) — see
intelligence-collection-disciplines.goes in the appendix; the card fits a rep's thirty seconds.
documented answer — offense is built from citations, not bravado. "Never ask what you cannot
evidence" is the section's law.
are listed explicitly — the card protects the rep from the team's own folklore.
(investigation); a facilitated workshop builds it from your team's evidence (win/loss knowledge,
deal experience). The mode choice depends on where the evidence lives — bring rich internal
win/loss knowledge to a facilitated session instead, and use this skill when the public record is
the stronger source.
Application
it as the evidence base; search only for gaps and freshness (older than one quarter).
1. Your product, and the one competitor this card targets?
2. What segment and buyer do these deals involve?
3. What objection or loss reason triggered this card?
If unanswered, proceed with labeled assumptions.
release notes, reviews, customer stories, comparison content), source types, how facts will be
separated from inference. Continue unless revised.
skill's update flags name these sections.
Card schema (do not reorder)
~~~markdown
Battle Card: [Your Product] vs [Competitor]
As-of date: | Deal context: [segment, buyer]
1. Thirty-Second Read
2. Say This
3. Ask This (trap questions)
4. Watch Out For
5. Pricing & Packaging Snapshot
6. Do Not Say
Appendix: Evidence Table
| Claim | Label | Source | Date |
|---|
Assumptions to Validate
~~~
A copy/paste fill-in version of this schema, with quality checks, lives in template.md.
Final Step (offer exactly 4 options)
competitive-intel-watch to keep this card currentAccept 1, 2, 3, 4, 1 and 3, Verbose Mode, or a custom path.
Examples
A trap question built correctly (fictional):
> Ask this: "How does your migration handle custom fields over the 200-field limit?" — documented
> answer: their own docs state custom-field migration caps at 200 with manual re-entry beyond it —
> Fact (docs page, checked Jul 2026). Safe to ask: the answer is in
> their documentation, so the rep isn't bluffing — they're citing.
A "Do Not Say" entry earning its keep:
> - Don't say "they can't do SSO on the starter tier" — they shipped it in June
> (release notes); a rep repeating our old card walks into a
> correction that costs the room's trust.
> - Don't lead with "we're cheaper" — true only below 50 seats (their pricing,
> ours); above that the math flips, and enterprise buyers check.
See examples/sample.md for a complete worked card (fictional FSM-software
market) rebuilt from the competitive-intel-watch example's update flags — the full chain landing
in a field artifact. examples/sample-industrial.md builds the
industrial version, where the channel partner is a card audience and pricing is opaque.
Common Pitfalls
what tells a rep how hard they can lean on a claim when the buyer pushes back.
seconds is the budget; the appendix exists for everything else.
competitor a stage. If the evidence isn't in the appendix table, the question doesn't ship.
fastest way to destroy the card's credibility — and it's on the do-not-invent list for exactly that
reason.
A card without an as-of date, or without a watch feeding it update flags, is a liability wearing a
logo.
one most often omitted — usually because nobody wants to write down which beloved claims are dead.
References
autonomous-investigation (Workflow) — the governing protocolintelligence-collection-disciplines (Component) — discipline sources; SIGINT keeps this card freshcompetitive-research-snapshot (Workflow) — upstream evidence basecompetitive-intel-watch (Workflow) — flags when this card's sections go stalepositioning-statement (Component) — the strategic layer the card's talking points should agree withmarket-intelligence/battle-card-builder-prompt.md in thehttps://github.com/deanpeters/product-manager-prompts repo.