discovery-competitive-benchmark

Skill: discovery-competitive-benchmark

Trigger

Use this skill when the user wants to run a competitive benchmark during a discovery — e.g. "fais un benchmark concurrentiel", "analyse les solutions existantes", "steal phase", "what are competitors doing on X", "trouve des gold nuggets pour ma discovery".

Context

At Mayday, the Steal phase (step 5 of FOCUSED) is dedicated to benchmarking existing solutions before designing anything. The goal is NOT to copy, but to identify patterns, UX models, and "Gold Nuggets" — the 5 most inspiring solutions that can inform Mayday's design.

Benchmark sources to cover:

1. Direct competitors / ecosystem actors (tools in the same space as Mayday)
2. Usual suspects (industry leaders that likely solve a similar problem: Notion, Stripe, Linear, Figma, Google, etc.)
3. Adjacent industries (tools from other sectors solving the same underlying UX challenge)

Pro tip: Use web search to find changelogs, product documentation, and reviews — these are more accurate than marketing pages.

What to do

Step 1 — Gather context

Ask the user for the following if not already provided:

• What is the FUC (First Use Case) or problem being solved?
• Which direct competitors / ecosystem actors should be checked?
• Any specific UX patterns or capabilities to focus on?

Step 2 — Run the benchmark

For each product analyzed, produce a structured entry:

[Product Name] — [One-line description]

• Why relevant: How does this relate to the FUC?
• How they solve it: Describe the UX flow or feature in concrete terms
• Key UX patterns: The specific interaction patterns worth noting
• Limitations / feedback: What users complain about, what's missing
• 🔗 Source: Link to documentation, changelog, or review

Analyze at minimum:

• 2–3 direct competitors
• 2–3 "usual suspects" (Notion, Linear, Figma, Stripe, etc. depending on the problem)
• 1–2 from an adjacent industry if relevant

Step 3 — Extract the 5 Gold Nuggets

After analyzing all products, extract the 5 most inspiring patterns or solutions — things that should influence Mayday's design:

🥇 Gold Nugget 1: [Short title]

[What it is, why it's powerful, what Mayday should steal from it]

Repeat for 5 nuggets total.

Step 4 — Key patterns synthesis

End with a brief synthesis section:

• Recurring patterns across solutions: What do most products do the same way?
• Gaps / opportunities: What are competitors NOT doing well that Mayday could own?
• Recommendation: Based on the benchmark, what approach makes the most sense for Mayday?

Output format

• One section per product analyzed
• Then the 5 Gold Nuggets highlighted
• Then the synthesis
• Use headers, bold text, and emoji for scanability
• Include real links and source references where possible
• Write in the user's language
• Be specific about UX patterns — describe the actual interaction, not just "it has a good UI"

Example Gold Nugget format (from Knowledge Quality benchmark)

🥇 Gold Nugget: Cursor — Multi-file diff review

When an AI agent modifies multiple files, Cursor shows each impacted file in a sidebar with a before/after diff, letting the user accept or reject changes file by file. The key insight: each change includes a brief rationale ("why this file was touched"), which builds trust. For Mayday: this "impacted document list + rationale + per-item accept/reject" is the exact mental model for KB quality recommendations.