battle-card-builder skill by deanpeters

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 or competitive-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

Governing protocol: honors the autonomous-investigation contract — question budget of 3, search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, Just Enough Mode, stable schema, 4-option Final Step.
Discipline mix: SIGINT (pricing pages, site diffs — the freshest layer, what keeps cards from going stale) + OSINT (review mining for objection handling) + HUMINT (win/loss ground truth when you have it) — see intelligence-collection-disciplines.
Field-action criterion. Every element earns its place by being usable mid-conversation. Depth goes in the appendix; the card fits a rep's thirty seconds.
Trap questions are evidence work. A trap question is only safe to ask when you know the documented answer — offense is built from citations, not bravado. "Never ask what you cannot evidence" is the section's law.
The "Do Not Say" section is protection. Claims you can't evidence, or that invite a counter, are listed explicitly — the card protects the rep from the team's own folklore.
Two modes, one artifact. This skill builds the card from the world's evidence (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.
Do-not-invent list: features, pricing, market share, customer wins, roadmap items, quotes.

Application

Check session for existing evidence — a competitive snapshot or watch report. If present, use it as the evidence base; search only for gaps and freshness (older than one quarter).
Credit inline context, then ask only the unanswered questions (max 3):
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.
If researching fresh, show the 3-bullet search plan — what you'll check (pricing pages, release notes, reviews, customer stories, comparison content), source types, how facts will be separated from inference. Continue unless revised.
Draft the card in the schema below exactly — cards are diffable across runs, and the watch skill's update flags name these sections.

Card schema (do not reorder)

# Battle Card: [Your Product] vs [Competitor]
**As-of date:** | **Deal context:** [segment, buyer]
 
## 1. Thirty-Second Read
- **They win when:** [1-2 bullets, labeled]
- **We win when:** [1-2 bullets, labeled]
- **The one thing to say:** [a single defensible sentence]
 
## 2. Say This
- [Talking point] — [evidence: URL, date, label]
- [Max 4; every one sourced]
 
## 3. Ask This (trap questions)
- "[Question whose documented answer favors us]" — [the documented answer: URL, label]
- [Max 3; never ask what you cannot evidence]
 
## 4. Watch Out For
- [Their strength a rep should not walk into] — [URL, label]
- [Their likely counter to our pitch] — [Inference, basis]
 
## 5. Pricing & Packaging Snapshot
- [Their tiers/pricing as published] — [URL, as-of date]
- [Where "contact sales" hides the number] — [labeled]
 
## 6. Do Not Say
- [Claims we cannot evidence, or that invite a counter]
 
## Appendix: Evidence Table
| Claim | Label | Source | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
 
### Assumptions to Validate
- [Assumption 1] / [Assumption 2] / [Assumption 3]

A copy/paste fill-in version of this schema, with quality checks, lives in template.md.

Final Step (offer exactly 4 options)

Pressure-test the card: role-play the competitor's rep against it
Build the card for a second competitor
Set up competitive-intel-watch to keep this card current
Compress to a one-screen mobile version for the field

Accept 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

The unlabeled card. Talking points without sources are folklore with formatting. The label is what tells a rep how hard they can lean on a claim when the buyer pushes back.
The research-report card. Two pages of landscape context a rep will never read mid-deal. Thirty seconds is the budget; the appendix exists for everything else.
Trap questions on hope. Asking a question whose answer you haven't documented hands the competitor a stage. If the evidence isn't in the appendix table, the question doesn't ship.
Quote invention. A fabricated customer quote or paraphrased review presented as verbatim is the fastest way to destroy the card's credibility — and it's on the do-not-invent list for exactly that reason.
The immortal card. Cards rot at SIGINT speed — pricing pages and release notes change monthly. A card without an as-of date, or without a watch feeding it update flags, is a liability wearing a logo.
Skipping "Do Not Say." The section that protects reps from the team's own stale folklore is the one most often omitted — usually because nobody wants to write down which beloved claims are dead.

References

autonomous-investigation (Workflow) — the governing protocol
intelligence-collection-disciplines (Component) — discipline sources; SIGINT keeps this card fresh
competitive-research-snapshot (Workflow) — upstream evidence base
competitive-intel-watch (Workflow) — flags when this card's sections go stale
positioning-statement (Component) — the strategic layer the card's talking points should agree with
Adapted from market-intelligence/battle-card-builder-prompt.md in the https://github.com/deanpeters/product-manager-prompts repo.