Competitor Analyzer — Enterprise Competitive Intelligence

Enterprise Tier Automated competitive intelligence — on-demand analysis and nightly monitoring, inside your Hermes agent.

⚡ Two modes of operation:

ON-DEMAND Ask a question → agent researches 7 axes in parallel → structured report within seconds.
NIGHTLY Cron job checks competitor URLs every night → change detection → priority-flagged digest in your inbox.

What It Does

On-Demand Analysis

When you ask any competitive intelligence question, Hermes loads the competitor-analyzer skill and researches 7 axes in parallel:

Research Axis	What It Extracts
💰 Pricing Pages	Plan names, per-plan prices (monthly/annual), limits, free tier detection, annual discounts, hidden fees
🔧 Feature Pages	Core features, integrations, deployment options, security certifications (SOC2, HIPAA), API capabilities
📋 Changelogs	New feature launches, price changes, deprecation notices, beta programs (last 90 days)
📰 News & Funding	Funding rounds, acquisitions, leadership changes, partnership announcements
⭐ Review Sites	G2/Capterra ratings, common praise themes, complaint themes, rating trends
🏢 Hiring Patterns	New job postings, role categories, strategic hiring signals
🐙 GitHub Activity	Star count, commit frequency, issue velocity, contributor growth (OSS competitors only)

The Report You Get

Section	What's in it
📊 Executive Summary	2-3 sentence landscape overview with key takeaway
💰 Pricing Comparison	Side-by-side table: all tiers, free trials, annual discounts, hidden fees
🔧 Feature Matrix	✅/❌/⚠️ comparison across all competitors and your own product
📋 Recent Moves	Funding, launches, price changes, acquisitions — last 90 days with impact ratings
🎯 Market Positioning	Each competitor's stated positioning mapped to reality
⚠️ Threats & Opportunities	Evidence-backed, action-oriented analysis
✅ Recommended Actions	Ranked by priority with rationale

Nightly Monitoring

The skill runs on a cron schedule (default: 2:00 AM UTC). It checks your competitor list every night and alerts you to changes.

Change Detection Rules

Priority	Trigger
🔴 HIGH	Price change >10%, new competitive tier launched, competitor funding round or acquisition
🟡 MEDIUM	Feature parity gap widening, new competitor entrant, negative review surge
🔵 LOW	Content updates, minor pricing adjustments (<10%), blog posts
⚪ NONE	No changes — delivers one sentence: "No changes detected." No spam.

Setup

1. Create Your Competitor List

Create a file at ~/Consultancy_AI/reports/competitor/competitor-urls.txt:

# Competitor monitoring targets
# Pricing pages
https://competitor-a.com/pricing
https://competitor-b.com/pricing

# Changelogs / What's new
https://competitor-a.com/changelog
https://competitor-b.com/blog

2. Schedule the Nightly Cron Job

hermes cron create \
  "0 2 * * *" \
  --name "nightly-competitor-monitor" \
  --skill "competitor-analyzer" \
  --prompt "Run MODE 2 nightly monitoring. Check all URLs for changes." \
  --workdir "$HOME/Consultancy_AI"

3. (Optional) Weekly Digest

hermes cron create \
  "0 9 * * 1" \
  --name "weekly-competitor-digest" \
  --skill "competitor-analyzer" \
  --prompt "Generate weekly competitor intelligence digest. Deliver a 5-bullet summary." \
  --workdir "$HOME/Consultancy_AI"

Example Prompts

Just ask naturally — the skill auto-loads when it detects competitive intelligence questions:

"Analyze our top 3 competitors in the AI agent space. Compare pricing, features, and recent moves."
"I need a detailed pricing comparison between us, Competitor A, and Competitor B. Include free tier limits and annual discounts."
"Competitor X just launched a new feature. How does it compare to ours and what should we do?"
"Set up nightly monitoring for our top 5 competitors' pricing pages and changelogs."
"Quick: what's Competitor A charging for their enterprise tier?"

Requirements

Enable these toolsets in Hermes before first use:

hermes tools enable web
hermes tools enable browser
hermes tools enable terminal
hermes tools enable file

⚠️ Browser tools are essential. Most modern SaaS pricing pages (Stripe, Notion, Linear, etc.) are JavaScript-rendered and won't return data without browser automation. The browser toolset handles these.

🔒 Cloudflare/Cloudfront protection. Some enterprise sites (OpenAI, Anthropic) block automated browsers. The skill handles this gracefully: it falls back to web_search for third-party pricing data and flags blocked pages in the report. No data fabrication.

Production Test Results

✅ PRODUCTION-READY — Tested 2026-05-11 on real competitors

Test	Result
Real pricing extraction (GitHub Copilot)	✅ 5 tiers extracted live
Real GitHub stats (OpenAI Codex)	✅ 81.8k stars, 6,350 commits
Real changelog (Claude Code docs)	✅ 40+ version history
Cloudflare bot detection	✅ Correctly identified + documented fallback
Blocked pages (claude.ai, openai.com)	✅ Properly flagged with workaround
Report format verification	✅ 16/16 checks passed
Setup mode (directory + URLs file)	✅ Created in one step
Nightly monitoring (first run)	✅ Baseline generated correctly

What This Replaces

💡 Most consultancies charge €1,500–3,000 for a single competitive landscape analysis. That's a one-time snapshot, obsolete within weeks. The Competitor Analyzer produces updated intelligence every day, automatically, for the life of your engagement. At €3,500 for the Enterprise tier, this skill alone pays for itself within two months compared to outsourcing competitive research.

🔍 Competitor Analyzer