Competitor Tracker

Monitor and analyze competitors' influencer marketing: who they partner with, what campaigns they run, how they structure collaborations, and what results they appear to achieve.

Quick Start

Shortest invocation:

Monitor [competitor name]'s influencer marketing activities

Compare a set of rivals and surface gaps:

Compare influencer strategies across [competitor 1], [competitor 2], and [competitor 3], then show me which influencers they're missing in [category]

Skill Contract

Reads: your brand name, competitor set, platforms, time period, focus areas, and dated source records. Raw handles/profile URLs may be used transiently to resolve evidence, but saved/report/handoff creator identity uses only opaque creator_ref.
Writes: return the competitive intelligence report inline by default; save it to memory/influencer/competitor-tracker/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md only with exact WARM-save authorization.
Promotes: only with separate exact authorization, promote durable facts (named competitors, their primary tiers/platforms, confirmed exclusive partners, recurring campaign windows) to memory/hot-cache.md. Each competitor-partner or exclusivity update for a rostered creator requires another exact authorization for an operation: propose request through registry-events.py to memory/events/creators.ndjson; only creator-registry can reconcile it into canonical state.
Done when:
1. Each tracked competitor has a partnership roster and campaign breakdown whose factual rows carry source ref, observation date, and window; otherwise the run returns NEEDS_INPUT with a collection plan.
2. A side-by-side comparison table covers your brand plus every competitor.
3. At least 3 ranked opportunities (untapped creators, strategy gaps, or open platforms) are listed.
Primary next skill: campaign-planner

Handoff Summary

Emit the standard shape from skill-contract.md §Handoff Summary Format.

Data Sources

Tier 1 can produce the tracking schema and exact collection/query plan. Named partners, campaigns, current activity, content patterns, and performance facts require dated user records, public-post evidence, or live connector results. Without them, return NEEDS_INPUT; do not reconstruct a roster or strategy from general knowledge. Estimates require an explicit formula and input refs and are never partnership facts.

Where a tool could speed things up, use ~~ connector placeholders:

~~influencer database — pull a competitor's known partner roster and tier mix.
~~social platform analytics — estimate reach, engagement rate, and post cadence per creator.
~~CRM — cross-check whether a former competitor partner has already touched your pipeline.

Keyless news read on rivals: python3 "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/connectors/gdelt.py" '"<competitor>"' --days 30 lists index results with source URLs/dates. Label the retrieval Measured for the index query only; an article result does not verify a creator partnership or exclusivity until the underlying dated source explicitly supports it. See scripts/connectors/README.md.

Rival-partner channel watch (free key / keyless): python3 "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/connectors/youtube.py" channel <partner-handle> reads a competitor partner's real subscriber/view counts (free YOUTUBE_API_KEY), and every YouTube channel also has a keyless RSS feed — https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC… piped into rss_monitor.py — for tracking partner posting cadence and spotting a burst of sponsored content without any API at all.

Label every estimate as an estimate. See CONNECTORS.md for the keyless/free recipe per category.

Instructions

Each step has a fill-in template in references/templates.md.

Define competitive set — capture your brand, prioritized competitors (direct/indirect), platforms, time period, and focus areas. (template)
Track influencer partnerships — build current/recent rosters only from dated explicit partnership evidence. Use creator_ref in all durable output; never infer exclusivity. (template)
Analyze campaigns — break down evidenced campaigns and retain source/date/window per fact. Replace “what worked” causation with observed association plus a labeled hypothesis. (template)
Review content strategy — log format preferences, content themes, messaging, hashtag strategy, and creative direction. (template)
Estimate performance — only when the formula, source inputs, compatibility, and window are declared. Otherwise leave metrics TBD/NEEDS_INPUT. (template)
Generate competitive comparison — a side-by-side table (your brand + every competitor), a strategy-element matrix, and a share-of-voice bar. (template)
Identify opportunities — rank untapped and former-competitor creators, strategy gaps, and platform/niche/format openings (at least 3 ranked). (template)
Generate insights report — executive summary, strategic recommendations (immediate/short/long-term), tracking recommendations, and next review date. Return it inline and offer the exact WARM save path; do not save, promote, or propose registry facts without their separate authorizations. (template)

Worked Example

User: "Track the influencer marketing activities of Glossier, Fenty Beauty, and Rare Beauty"

Output: NEEDS_INPUT. The names alone do not evidence current partners or strategies. Return exact public-post/news/provider queries and required source/date/window fields; do not name partners, characterize strategy, estimate performance, or rank opportunities until dated evidence arrives. Full invocation patterns live in references/templates.md.

Reference Materials

references/templates.md — fill-in templates for all 8 steps, invocation patterns, worked example, and tips.
skill-contract.md — shared contract and handoff summary format.
state-model.md — memory tiers and save-path conventions.
CONNECTORS.md — keyless/free data recipe per ~~ connector category.
Sibling Scout skills: influencer-discovery — find creators competitors aren't using; fit-scorer — score competitor partners for your brand.
trend-spotter — spot trends competitors are riding.

Next Best Skill

Primary: campaign-planner — turn competitive gaps into a differentiated campaign.
Alternate (Scout): influencer-discovery — pursue the untapped and former-competitor creators this analysis surfaced.
Alternate (Scout): fit-scorer — score a competitor's roster against your brand before you poach.

Termination note: keep a visited-set of skills invoked this session. If the next skill has already run this session, stop and report the chain complete instead of re-invoking. Max chain depth is 3 hops.