Intel Discipline Advisor — Competitive Intelligence Triage Advisor

Skill Overview

Intel Discipline Advisor is an interactive competitive intelligence triage skill. Through three adaptive questions, it routes the competitive or market question at hand to the appropriate combination of intelligence disciplines (OSINT, FININT, TECHINT, etc.), a matching monitoring cadence, and the corresponding execution skills. It also teaches you how to map decisions to disciplines as you use it.

Use Cases

1. You suspect a competitor is making a move but don’t know where to start — For example, you notice that a competitor’s hiring pages have suddenly doubled in size or that its pricing has been quietly adjusted. You need to select several independent channels for cross-validation rather than blindly checking everything.
2. You need to build or refresh an intelligence deliverable — Such as estimating TAM/SAM/SOM market size, creating a sales battlecard, defining product positioning, or developing an ICP profile. First, you need to determine what types of data to collect and which skill should execute the work.
3. You want to establish sustainable competitor monitoring — You have limited time (half an hour per week or one day per quarter) and need to design a monitoring cadence based on the effort you can realistically commit, avoiding a fictional coverage plan that cannot be maintained.

Core Functions

1. Three-question adaptive triage — It asks, in sequence, about the type of problem on your desk (suspected competitor activity, deliverable construction, industry-structure puzzle, or standing monitoring), the signals you have already observed, and your budget and geographic constraints. This turns the vague feeling that “I think the competitor is up to something” into a clearly scoped investigation.
2. Numbered recommendations and discipline routing — It provides 3–5 numbered recommendations. Each identifies the “discipline combination → monitoring cadence → execution skill → deliverable” and explains the mapping logic behind the choice. Recommendations always begin with the two or three most relevant disciplines, rejecting the performative approach of running all eight disciplines for blanket coverage.
3. Honest off-ramp advice — If your question is better answered another way—for example, “Why are customers churning?” is better addressed through win/loss interviews than patent searches—the skill will tell you directly to conduct interviews rather than forcing a public-intelligence investigation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is competitive intelligence triage?

Triage means selecting only the two or three intelligence-collection disciplines most relevant to the specific decision at hand, rather than running all eight disciplines, such as OSINT, FININT, and TECHINT. The essence of this skill is to match “the question on your desk” with the right combination of disciplines, monitoring cadence, and execution skills—and, by showing the reasoning behind the match, help you no longer need the skill after the third use.

If I suspect a competitor is making a major move, which channels should I check first?

If you have already observed a signal—for example, a hiring surge—the skill will count it as one activated discipline (HUMINT), then recommend independent channels for cross-validation, such as TECHINT (patent and academic-paper searches), SIGINT (subdomain and webpage snapshot comparisons), and FININT (earnings-call transcripts). Agreement between two independent disciplines forms a workable hypothesis; agreement among three is worth reporting to management.

Can competitive intelligence be conducted using free public sources?

Yes. When clarifying the constraints, the skill first confirms whether you can use only free sources or also have access to paid tools, and then provides recommendations accordingly. For example, patent searches on patents.google.com, subdomain lookups on crt.sh, webpage comparisons through the Wayback Machine, and earnings-call recordings on competitors’ investor-relations pages are all zero-cost collection channels. The geographic scope is also confirmed, because the region determines which registries and statistical agencies are applicable.