opencode-workflow/skills/market-research/SKILL.md

name	description
market-research	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