deal-research

Triggers when converting a competitive landscape, market mapping, or M&A target spreadsheet into a board-ready executive deliverable. Preserves the raw research sheet and adds a second sheet that compresses each cell while preserving the full rating + key evidence — fidelity over brevity. Verdict-led layout, Pattern brand styling, and consulting-grade formatting. Mines the rating-and-rationale source format produced by the Pattern competitive landscape pipeline.

Build a rigorous, evidence-based assessment of a company's competitive moat — the structural advantage that allows it to earn above-market returns sustainably. Use this skill whenever Ian asks to "assess the moat," "analyze competitive advantage," "how defensible is this business," "what protects this company," "evaluate the moat," "is this moat real," "rate the competitive position," or "what makes this business hard to displace." Also triggers for: "switching cost analysis," "network effect analysis," "competitive defensibility," "moat durability," "barrier to entry." This skill builds the affirmative case for a moat with the specific evidence standard required to survive adversarial IC scrutiny. It is distinct from: - Competitor profiling (market-research Level 2 — describes what competitors do) - Moat attack vectors (red-team-investment-attacks.md — challenges moat claims) - Moat type taxonomy (mckinsey-consultant Dimension 4 — lists moat categories) This skill owns the methodology for PROVING a moat is real, measuring its strength, assessing its durability, and producing an IC-ready moat verdict.

Generate or customize a comprehensive Due Diligence Request List (DDR) for PE buyout or M&A sell-side transactions. Use this skill whenever the user mentions due diligence, a DDR, data room requests, diligence checklist, or wants to prepare or tailor a request list for a deal. Trigger even if the user just says "I need a DDR for [company]", "help me build out diligence questions for [deal]", or "customize this request list." This skill covers full DDR generation from scratch given a company description, and targeted customization of an existing DDR to a specific business model, sector, and deal context.

Execute professional-grade market research projects using a structured, hypothesis-driven methodology. Use this skill whenever Ian asks to conduct market research, build a research brief, run a market analysis, size a market, profile competitors, or produce a research deliverable for any deal, product, or strategic initiative. Trigger even for partial requests like "help me build a brief for X", "what's the market look like for Y", "I need a research plan", "run diligence on this market", or "put together a research framework." This skill governs the full research workflow — from brief creation through pyramid analysis, theme development, report architecture, and the mandatory iteration loop — to final DOCX or PPTX output. Integrates with mckinsey-consultant (analytical methodology), writing-style (prose and claim discipline), claim-scrutinizer (logic redline), red-team (adversarial pass), and pattern-docx / pattern-investment-pptx (file output). Does not duplicate logic owned by those skills.

McKinsey-level structured consulting methodology for strategy, analysis, and problem-solving. This is the analytical OS — load it for any strategy work, investment evaluation, structured diagnosis, framework design, or McKinsey-style document. It owns all analytical methodology: 7-step MBB problem solving, MECE issue trees, 7 strategy dimensions, Pyramid Principle, Six Screening Questions for investments, and all analytical modules (Porter's, SWOT, market sizing, positioning maps, value chain). It does NOT govern evidence gathering or source validation — that is market-research's job. For any task that requires original data collection (market sizing, competitive intelligence, customer research), invoke market-research on top of this skill. For financial modeling, use financial-model-builder. For PPTX/docx output, use pattern-investment-pptx or pattern-docx.