Anything you can copy next week was never a position.
The tool that reads a competitor's marketing as a confession, works out what their constraints prevent them from doing, and finds three positioning moves they would have to become a different company to match.
A competitor's marketing site is a confession. It tells you what they have decided matters, which means it also tells you what they have decided to ignore. Most competitive analysis stops at the surface, listing features and copying the ones that look good. That is imitation, and imitation puts you on their ground where they are already winning.
The better move is to read the site for what it reveals about their constraints, then position where those constraints prevent them from responding. The strongest positioning move is one your competitor would have to become a different company to match.
Read what they are optimising for, then go where they can't follow.
Same competitor, same homepage. Here is your response, run two ways.
You run a small, hands-on analytics consultancy, up against a fast-growing, venture-backed self-serve analytics product. You want to know how to compete.
You get a competitive-analysis approach. Identify strengths and weaknesses, find gaps, differentiate on service and expertise, emphasise the personal touch a big product cannot match.
It is the advice every challenger gets, and it leaves you fighting on their chosen ground. Worse, the moves it suggests are ones they can copy. They bolt on a success team and your differentiation evaporates.
It reads their site as a confession, dashboards in minutes, optimised for low-touch signups, so they have deprioritised anything needing a human. Then three moves they cannot follow:
- →Interpretation, not dashboards: they cannot follow without hiring humans, breaking their margin
- →Serve the executive, not the analyst: their whole funnel assumes a hands-on user
- →The anti-platform: their funding requires expansion revenue, so they cannot champion staying small
Then the move that is not a positioning move at all: stop competing on analytics. The real pain is decisions, not dashboards. Decline the comparison entirely, because positioning fights on the incumbent's chosen axis are usually losing fights.
The cold version put you on their pitch. This found the ground they can't stand on.
- ✦Founders entering a market a competitor dominates
- ✦Operators repositioning against a rival and tired of feature-comparison thinking
- ✦Anyone who can see what a competitor is doing but not yet what it implies
- →steal-like-a-strategist.zip: a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to
~/.claude/skills/ - →steal-like-a-strategist-skill.md: plain markdown. Works in ChatGPT Custom GPTs, Gemini, Claude Projects, agent system prompts, anywhere
- →A README inside the zip with install steps for Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and the API
What it does with a real question.
Here are the homepage, pricing page and three recent LinkedIn posts from our closest competitor, a payroll platform for small UK retailers. They have started talking about 'peace of mind' and dropped all mention of price. We compete mainly on being the cheapest. I want to understand what move they are making.
They are moving off price, and you can't see it from the copy alone. I haven't seen the pages themselves, so I'm working from your description, but "peace of mind" plus no price anywhere is a coherent signal. They have decided their buyer is the retailer who fears a payroll mistake, not the one comparing monthly fees. Narrative precedes product, so expect compliance guarantees, support tiers and probably a price rise to follow.
That tells you who they are about to abandon: the owner of a three-person shop who picked them because they were affordable. Trust built on reassurance cannot be matched by a company whose positioning is now premium. They would have to publish prices and discount, which contradicts the story they've just started telling, and you are better placed to exploit that gap than to fight it.
The risk is on your side. Being the cheapest is a position that only works if cheap is not also read as risky, and a competitor selling peace of mind is quietly making your low price look like a gamble. Don't answer by shouting a lower number. Pair price with proof: publish a clear accuracy record, a named UK-based support contact, and a plain statement of what happens if you get a payslip wrong.
Next move this week: pull your last ten churned or lost small-retailer customers and check how many named price versus worry. That tells you whether to defend the cheap buyer or to compete for the anxious one.
The full Tool runs the whole procedure and writes the complete deliverable, not this excerpt.
Written by claude-sonnet-5-5 with this Tool loaded, 2026-10-11. Checked automatically for length and for copied framework text.
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Before you buy.
How is this different from just asking Claude directly?
Asked cold, Claude lists strengths and weaknesses and suggests you differentiate, usually with moves the competitor can copy. This reads their marketing for the constraints behind it, reads their narrative for where they are heading, and produces only moves they are structurally unable to match, each with the reason they cannot follow.
Will this work with ChatGPT, Gemini, and other LLMs?
Yes. You get a native Claude Skill (.zip) that auto-invokes in Claude, plus a plain .md you can paste into a ChatGPT Custom GPT, a Gemini system prompt, or any LLM. The procedure travels with the file.
Can I share this with my team?
It's licensed for your own personal and professional use. The output it produces is yours to circulate. To put the Tool itself in the hands of a whole team, email hello@authority.md about team licensing.
What if it doesn't work for me?
If the file hasn't been delivered, or arrives defective or empty, we refund in full: see our refund policy.
Steal Like a Strategist is a positioning tool. Not a substitute for talking to real buyers or doing primary market research.