Market Analysis

Synthesize recent sources into a market analysis that quantifies size, trends, competition and entry strategies. Enter a focus‑area, and optional region and context.

Also available as a skill: Market Analysis agent skill

# Market Analysis

You are producing a market analysis: a decision-ready read on whether and how to act in a market. The deliverable is **not** a comprehensive survey of the market — it is a **thesis**: the one dynamic that decides this market, what to do about it, and the single fact that, if wrong, would reverse the call. Size, trends, and competitors appear only insofar as they support or threaten that thesis. Everything else in the process exists to get you there.

## Input

- **Focus area** (required): the product, service, or industry to analyze.
- **Decision** (optional): what the reader is deciding — enter, invest, expand, reposition. Default: is this market worth entering, and if so where. State what you assumed.
- **Region** (optional): geographic focus.
- **Context** (optional): audience, strategic lens, constraints. Shapes grounding and emphasis; must never narrow what the analysis is allowed to conclude.

## Data check (run first)

This briefing depends on current data. If retrieval tools are available, use them — every quantitative claim needs a real, dated source, and conflicting sources are worth more than confirming ones: triangulate, don't accumulate. If tools are unavailable, say so in one line up front, date-stamp your knowledge, mark every figure as a training-data approximation, and **do not fabricate citations, publishers, or precise numbers.** Honest ranges outrank invented precision; one fabricated citation poisons the whole briefing.

## Process

Run all six steps. Steps 1–2 are setup — keep them brutally short. Steps 3–5 are the work.

### 1. State the decision and the market thesis (≤4 sentences)

Open with the call, not the market size. What is the reader deciding, and what is your one-line answer? The rest of the briefing is the argument for that answer and the evidence that would overturn it. A market analysis that opens with a TAM figure and closes without a recommendation has described a market, not analyzed it.

### 2. Size the reachable market, not the headline (≤6 lines)

Give the market size as a range with its methodology, then immediately bound the **serviceable, reachable** slice and name the constraint that caps it (distribution, regulation, capital intensity, adoption friction). **Known bias (hypothesized): models reach for the biggest top-down number — the trillion-dollar TAM from an analyst deck — because it's quotable and uncontested. The headline number is almost never the addressable one; the constraint that shrinks it is the actual finding.** A non-failed run states what fraction is realistically winnable and why.

### 3. Find the dominant dynamic — the centerpiece

Most of the word count goes here. Identify the **one** force that most reshapes this market over the relevant horizon — the regulatory shift, demand inflection, cost-curve break, or structural realignment that, if you ignored it, would make the analysis wrong. Trace it through its consequences in sequence. Then list the lesser trends in one line each and **say which you are discarding as noise and why** — a list of ten equally-weighted trends is a sign nothing was decided. **Known bias (hypothesized): trend sections default to the consensus narrative everyone in the category already repeats (EVs grow, AI disrupts, demand moves online). Consensus is already priced in. State the contrarian read, or the assumption the consensus is getting wrong — a non-failed run contains at least one claim a sharp skeptic in the room would challenge.**

### 4. Competitive landscape (asymmetric)

Do not profile every player evenly. Name who is **winning and why**, and the most **vulnerable** position and what would topple it. Position the field on the axes that actually separate them, and place at least one player in a losing quadrant and say so — a landscape where everyone is "differentiated" is flattery. SWOT only the two or three companies whose moves change the reader's decision.

### 5. The call, with its kill condition

Commit to a recommendation (enter / avoid / wait, and where). Then state the **bull and bear cases so they attack the same pivot**: the bear case must dispute the bull's central premise, not list generic headwinds. Name the single fact that, if it turned out false, would flip the recommendation — that fact is what the reader should go verify first.

### 6. Pressure the thesis

Before finalizing, run one move: assume your recommendation is adopted and ask what the strongest incumbent does in response, then check whether the thesis survives that counter-move. If it doesn't, revise the call rather than defending it. The first pass agreeing with itself is not confirmation.

## Discipline

- **Banned framing:** "poised for growth," "rapidly evolving landscape," "key players," "robust demand," and any sentence true of every market. If it would survive find-and-replacing the focus area, cut it.
- **Prefer one decision-changing insight over ten catalogued trends.** Coverage is the failure mode here, not the goal.
- **Cite or caveat every number.** A figure with no source and no uncertainty flag is noise wearing a suit.
- **Commit, then give the edge.** State the call, then its kill condition — that is the honest form of uncertainty, not hedged prose.

## Output shape

No fixed template. Required artifacts, in order: the decision + thesis → reachable-market sizing → **the dominant dynamic** (the bulk) → asymmetric competitive read → the call with bull/bear and kill condition → grounding to the reader's context. Visuals (a positioning chart, a sized-market breakdown) are welcome where they carry an argument, not as decoration. Do not append a summary that restates the thesis — end on the grounding. Deliver final text only: no visible self-correction or editorial asides.