Time to implement: <5 mins
Key outcomes?
A competitor announced a major partnership on Thursday afternoon. By Friday, three of your key accounts had heard about it. You found out on Monday. That gap is what this recipe closes.
Most operators track competitors the same way. A Google Alert that goes unread. A LinkedIn scroll when someone remembers. A junior analyst tasked with keeping an eye on things. It is inconsistent, incomplete, and entirely dependent on someone remembering to do it.
The result: you find out about funding rounds after the press release has already circulated. You hear about a competitor's new contract when a client mentions it in a meeting. You miss the Trustpilot reviews accumulating against a rival until a procurement team is already asking questions.
This recipe takes five minutes every Monday morning. One prompt. Claude searches the web for every competitor simultaneously, reads what it finds, and returns a structured one-page briefing covering every signal that matters that week. You walk into the week informed, not catching up.
Ingredients:
Serves: Energy operators and corporates
Tools required:
Claude Desktop with Cowork. The desktop app that runs Claude as an agent on your machine. Download from claude.ai/download. Requires a Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise plan.
Your competitor watchlist. The names of up to five companies you want to track. If you want sharper results, add one or two keywords per company - a product name, a key executive, or a specific project they are known for.
Ten minutes to set up once. After that the briefing runs itself every Monday morning without you touching anything.
1 Hour
TO IMPLEMENT
30 mins
TIME SAVED PER SALES CALL
Commis Chef - Claude Desktop required
DIFFICULTY
🧭 METHODOLOGY
Key steps
Step 1: Open Claude Desktop and switch to Cowork (1 minute)
Open the Claude Desktop app. At the top of the window you will see three tabs: Chat, Cowork, and Code. Click Cowork. This is where Claude runs as an agent rather than a conversational assistant — it can search the web, execute multi-step tasks, and crucially, run on a schedule.
Step 2: Start a new task and paste the master prompt (3 minutes)
Click '+ New task' in the upper left. Paste the prompt from the Prompt Kitchen below into the task input. Fill in your competitor names and any optional keywords. This is the only time you will ever fill in these details — Cowork saves them as the task's standing instructions.
Make sure web search is enabled in your Cowork settings before sending. This is what allows Claude to search for live news rather than relying on training data.
Step 3: Schedule the task (3 minutes)
Once your prompt is in, type /schedule in the task input. Cowork launches a setup flow and walks you through it with multiple choice questions: frequency, timing, and any additional details. Select Weekly and choose Monday morning at your preferred time — 7am works well for most people.
Alternatively, click 'Scheduled' in the left sidebar, then '+ New task' in the upper right. This opens a modal where you can enter the task name, paste the prompt directly, set the frequency to Weekly, choose Monday, and select your model. Click Save.
Important: Scheduled tasks only run while your computer is awake and the Claude Desktop app is open. If your laptop is closed on Monday morning, Cowork will run the task automatically as soon as you open the app and notify you it ran a skipped task. |
Step 4: Run it once now to test (3 minutes)
Do not wait until Monday. From the Scheduled tasks page, click into your new task and hit 'Run now'. Cowork searches the web for each competitor, works through the prompt, and returns the full structured briefing. Read it once, check the format looks right, and adjust the competitor keywords if any results are off-target.
From this point, every Monday morning the briefing is waiting for you in the task's history. Open Cowork, click Scheduled in the sidebar, and click into the Competitor Watch task to read that week's output.
Step 5: Read the briefing, act on the signals (3 minutes)
Each competitor gets the same format: headline for the week, funding and M&A signals, market moves, reputation signals, and one thing to watch next week. Read it once. Mark anything that needs a response. The entire briefing across five companies takes under three minutes because Claude is instructed to skip sections where nothing material happened, not to pad.
PROMPT KITCHEN (COPY THIS)
You are a competitive intelligence analyst supporting a senior leadership
team at an energy company. Your job is to surface only what matters —
not to summarise everything you find.
Today's date is [DATE]. Search the web for activity from the past 7 days
for each of the following competitors. Search each company separately
before writing anything.
Competitors:
[COMPETITOR 1] (additional keywords: [optional])
[COMPETITOR 2] (additional keywords: [optional])
[COMPETITOR 3] (additional keywords: [optional])
[COMPETITOR 4] (additional keywords: [optional])
[COMPETITOR 5] (additional keywords: [optional])
For each company, search specifically for:
Funding rounds, acquisitions, and major partnerships
New contracts, product launches, or market moves
Press coverage and executive thought leadership
Trustpilot or review site activity where findable
Before writing the briefing, identify the single most significant
development for each company this week. If nothing material happened,
that is a valid answer.
Then write the briefing using this format for each company:
[COMPANY NAME]
Headline: [The single most significant development, or "No material
developments this week"]
Funding and M&A: [2-3 bullets — skip entirely if nothing relevant]
Market moves: [2-3 bullets — skip entirely if nothing relevant]
Reputation signals: [1-2 bullets — skip entirely if nothing relevant]
Watch next week: [1 bullet — one thing worth monitoring based on
what you found]
Output rules:
Skip any section with nothing material. Do not write "nothing to report."
Flag anything requiring immediate attention with [ALERT] before the
relevant bulletDo not write anything that could apply to any company in any industry.
Every sentence must be specific to this company and this week.No introductory sentences. Start directly with the first company name.
If you are uncertain whether something is accurate, say so briefly
rather than stating it as fact.
📡 CHEF’S UPGRADE
Upgrade your recipe
Make Automation (email delivery)
For teams who want the briefing delivered to email rather than read inside Cowork.
A scheduled Make scenario fires every Monday at 7am, sends your competitor list to the Claude API with the master prompt, and delivers the formatted briefing as a clean email. Subject line: Competitor Digest, week of [date]. You never open Claude. It just arrives.
What you need: Make (make.com, free tier to start) and Claude API access (console.anthropic.com, five minutes to set up, costs roughly £0.05 per weekly briefing).
The full Make build guide, including the exact module setup and API configuration, is in the ResourceFull community: [link].
🧑🍳 PAIRS WELL WITH
Recipe No. 2: The Daily Digest. Build your general market intelligence each morning so your Claude brief lands on a foundation you already have. You'll spot the relevant details faster.
Recipe No. 1: The Pre-meeting prep call. Close the loop before the momentum fades. The natural next step after every meeting this recipe prepares you for.
Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways we can help you:
1. AI Academy
Want hands-on support building these workflows into your daily routine? The ResourceFull community is where we implement these recipes together. Once we get to 100+ signups we’ll go live.
2. Partnerships
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📩 Written by Ollie. Feel free to send us deals, announcements, or anything else using the link below or via LinkedIn.
