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Research Guide

Once you've found opportunities worth investigating, run deep research to validate them before building. The research skill covers six areas and ends with a verdict.

Six Research Areas #

Area What It Covers
Market Validation TAM/SAM estimates, target customers, growth trends, market timing
Competition Direct competitors, indirect alternatives, your advantages, barriers to entry
Revenue Pricing model, estimated MRR, pricing strategy, key assumptions
Technical APIs needed, complexity rating, dev time estimate, recommended stack, challenges
Keywords Primary keywords, search volume notes, SEO difficulty, content strategy
Go-to-Market Launch strategy, marketing channels, potential partnerships

Verdict System #

Every researched opportunity gets one of three verdicts:

  • Build: Strong signal. Market validated, technically feasible, clear revenue path.
  • Maybe: Promising but uncertain. Needs more validation or carries significant risk.
  • Skip: Not worth it. Too competitive, too small, or technically impractical.

Each verdict comes with detailed reasoning, pros and cons, risk assessment, and recommended next steps.

Running Research #

The opportunity needs to exist in your pipeline before you can research it:

  1. Save an opportunity through the discovery workflow or the save-opportunity tool
  2. Ask Claude to research it: "Research the QuickBooks inventory tracker opportunity"
  3. Claude runs 6-area research using web search and ecosystem data
  4. Results are saved to your pipeline through the save-research MCP tool
Research uses web search to validate market data, check competitors, and estimate pricing. Everything gets saved alongside the opportunity in your pipeline.

Compare & Decide #

Use research verdicts to make build or skip decisions across multiple opportunities:

text
You: "Research all my 'interested' opportunities"
Claude: Runs list-opportunities(status: "interested")
  Found 5 opportunities
  Researches each one sequentially
  Results: 2 build, 1 maybe, 2 skip
  Recommends focusing on the two "build" verdicts

Examples #

Full Research Flow

text
You: "Research the 'QuickBooks Inventory Sync' opportunity"
Claude: Finds the opportunity in your pipeline
       Runs market research via web search
       Analyzes 3 direct competitors
       Estimates $2,400/mo MRR potential
       Rates technical complexity as "medium"
       Identifies 5 primary keywords
       Recommends app store + content marketing launch
       Verdict: BUILD (strong demand signal, weak competition)

Comparing Verdicts

text
You: "Show me all my researched opportunities"
Claude: Runs list-opportunities(verdict: "build")
  Returns opportunities with build verdicts, sorted by potential