---
name: market-research
description: Research market context, competitor behavior, and category expectations to improve PM problem framing, scope decisions, and requirement quality.
---

Use this skill when the user wants market research, competitor analysis, category benchmarking, or when product requirements would benefit from knowing what users already expect in the market.

This is a pure PM research skill. It exists to improve product definition, not to design implementation.

## Goals

Use research to answer:
- What problem patterns already exist in the market?
- What are users trained to expect from comparable products?
- What are table-stakes behaviors versus differentiators?
- What risks, trust expectations, or NFR expectations are common in this category?

## What To Research

- Competitor messaging and positioning
- User-facing workflows and product behavior
- Packaging, pricing, and plan boundaries when relevant
- Compliance, security, audit, or reliability expectations when relevant
- Common success patterns, common gaps, and obvious differentiation opportunities

## What Not To Do

- Do not design architecture or modules
- Do not infer backend implementation details unless publicly documented and directly relevant to product expectations
- Do not reverse-engineer private systems
- Do not turn research into engineering tasks
- Do not copy competitors blindly; explain the implication for this product and this user context

## Process

1. Clarify the research question, target market, target user, and feature area.
2. Research public sources to gather evidence.
3. Group findings into patterns instead of producing a raw link dump.
4. Extract implications for problem framing, scope, acceptance criteria, and NFRs.
5. Write a concise research brief.

## Output

Save research briefs to `docs/research/{date}-{topic}.md`.

This file is an input artifact for downstream PM stages:
- `brainstorming` may use it to shape scope options and product direction
- `write-a-prd` may use it to justify requirements, success metrics, NFRs, and risks

Use this format:

## Research Question

## Target User / Buyer

## Market Context

## Competitor Patterns

## Table Stakes

## Differentiation Opportunities

## Risks And Expectations

## Implications For Requirements

## Sources

## Guidance

- Prefer direct evidence over broad speculation
- Prefer 3-5 strong comparable products over 20 shallow mentions
- Call out confidence level when evidence is weak
- Tie findings back to user-visible behavior, scope, and NFR expectations