--- title: Best Skills for market and competitor research slug: best-skills-for-market-research type: job-guide targetQuery: best AI for competitor research canonical: https://top-agent-skills.com/guides/best-skills-for-market-research published: 2026-08-26 updated: 2026-08-26 --- # Best Skills for market and competitor research The best Skill for competitor research is competitive-brief: it produces a positioning and messaging comparison with content gaps, opportunities, and threats — the document you use to decide where to compete, and the battlecard your sales conversations then run on. Around it, user-research plans the questions worth asking customers, research-synthesis turns the transcripts and survey results into themes instead of a pile of quotes, and seo-audit shows what your market types into a search box. All four are Anthropic-published, MIT-licensed, and verified on Claude.ai — the entire research loop runs in a browser conversation, and each step hands you a document rather than a chat log. ## The picks ### 1. competitive-brief (Official) Researches competitors and returns a positioning and messaging comparison with content gaps, opportunities, and threats — structured for a decision rather than a summary, and reusable afterwards as a sales battlecard. - Reach for it when: You need to decide where to compete, or a competitor just moved and you need a read on it. - You end up with: A positioning comparison with gaps, opportunities, and threats. - Entry: https://top-agent-skills.com/skill/competitive-brief (https://top-agent-skills.com/skill/competitive-brief.md) ### 2. user-research (Official) Plans and runs the study rather than just processing it: interview guides, usability tests, survey design, and framing the research question so the answers are usable. Built for teams with no dedicated researcher, which is every small business. - Reach for it when: You have not spoken to customers systematically yet and need the questions to be worth asking. - You end up with: An interview guide or survey design, and a research plan. - Entry: https://top-agent-skills.com/skill/user-research (https://top-agent-skills.com/skill/user-research.md) ### 3. research-synthesis (Official) Turns transcripts, survey results, usability notes, or NPS responses into themes, insights, and recommendations. This is the step founders skip because clustering by hand is slow, and skipping it is why research folders go unread. - Reach for it when: You have a stack of interviews or survey responses and no time to cluster them. - You end up with: Themes and insights with recommendations, traced to the source material. - Entry: https://top-agent-skills.com/skill/research-synthesis (https://top-agent-skills.com/skill/research-synthesis.md) ### 4. seo-audit (Official) The demand-side view: keyword research, on-page analysis, content gaps, technical checks, and competitor comparison. It tells you what your market actually types into a search box, which is often at odds with how you describe yourself. - Reach for it when: You want to know what your market searches for and where competitors already answer it. - You end up with: An SEO audit with keyword opportunities and content gaps. - Entry: https://top-agent-skills.com/skill/seo-audit (https://top-agent-skills.com/skill/seo-audit.md) ## What these Skills will not do - These structure and synthesize research; they do not have a live market-data subscription. Nothing here reads Crunchbase, SimilarWeb, or an ad platform on its own. - Competitor findings are a strong draft, not sourced fact. Verify a claim before it goes into a deck, a sales call, or a pricing decision. - seo-audit analyses what you give it and what it can reason about. For live rank tracking and keyword volume you need a platform — the catalog lists SE Ranking’s own skill suite for that, and it is not a no-terminal install. - research-synthesis needs input. It clusters transcripts, survey answers, and notes you supply; it cannot go and talk to your customers. ## Common questions **What is the best AI for competitor research?** competitive-brief, Anthropic’s competitive research skill. It researches competitors and returns a positioning and messaging comparison with content gaps, opportunities, and threats — structured for a decision rather than a summary. It is verified on Claude.ai, so it installs in the browser with no terminal. **Can it tell me how big my market is?** Not reliably, and you should not ask it to. These Skills have no market-data subscription: they structure reasoning and synthesize what you provide. Use them for positioning, messaging gaps, and customer insight — and get sizing from a source you can cite. **I have twenty customer interviews and no time. What do I install?** research-synthesis. It turns interview transcripts, survey results, usability notes, or NPS responses into themes, insights, and recommendations — which is the step most founders skip because clustering by hand is slow. Upload the transcripts to the conversation and ask for the synthesis. **What is the difference between user-research and research-synthesis?** They are the two halves of the same loop. user-research plans and runs the study — interview guides, usability tests, survey design, framing the question properly. research-synthesis processes what comes back. If you have not talked to anyone yet, start with the first; if you have a folder of transcripts, start with the second. **Does the SEO part replace a real SEO tool?** No. seo-audit is a strong structural audit — keyword ideas, on-page analysis, content gaps, technical checks, competitor comparison — and it is free. It does not have live rank or volume data. When you need that, the catalog lists SE Ranking’s official skill suite, which is developer-installed and requires a platform subscription. --- _Top Agent Skills. Machine-readable twin of https://top-agent-skills.com/guides/best-skills-for-market-research._ _Catalog as one JSON file (CC BY 4.0): https://top-agent-skills.com/skills.json_