How to use the Market Research agent skill: setup and examples

What the Market Research skill makes the agent do

Once the skill is installed, the agent follows a fixed research method when you ask about a market, competitor, investor or technology. Every important claim should carry a source, old data should be flagged, and facts are kept separate from inference and recommendations. The agent is also asked to include contrarian evidence and downside cases.

Output follows a set structure: executive summary, key findings, implications, risks and caveats, recommendation, and sources. The goal is a decision aid rather than a raw summary.

• Investor or fund diligence: fund size, stage, check size, relevant portfolio companies, public thesis, fit and red flags
• Competitive analysis: product reality, funding and traction if public, distribution and pricing clues, positioning gaps
• Market sizing: top-down estimates from reports or public datasets, bottom-up sanity checks, explicit assumptions for each step
• Technology or vendor research: how it works, trade-offs, integration complexity, lock-in, security and compliance risk

Install the skill: download the ZIP and unzip it

Download the ZIP of the market-research skill from this page and unzip it. The skill folder contains two files: SKILL.md, which holds the instructions, and agents/openai.yaml.

For a personal setup, place the unzipped skill folder inside ~/.claude/skills/. To limit it to one project, put it inside that project's .claude/skills/ folder instead.

If you use the Claude apps, you can upload the skill instead. Open Settings, go to Capabilities, then Skills, and upload it there.

• Personal install: ~/.claude/skills/market-research/
• Project install: .claude/skills/market-research/ inside your project
• Claude apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills

Trigger the skill with natural requests

You do not need a special command. The skill's description tells the agent when to use it: market sizing, competitor comparisons, fund research, technology scans, or research that informs business decisions. Ask in plain language and say what decision the research should support.

Naming the type of research helps. Mentioning the decision, the audience or the time frame gives the agent more to work with.

• Size the market for a B2B invoicing tool for freelance designers in the UK, and tell me whether it is big enough to build for.
• Compare our three closest competitors on product, pricing clues and funding, and list positioning gaps we could use.
• Research the investors who have backed early-stage developer tools in the last few years, and rank which ones fit a seed round for our product.
• Scan the vector database vendors we are considering and flag lock-in and security risks before we commit.

What the skill needs and what it does not do

The skill lists no required tools or dependencies. It does not run scripts and does not use the network itself. It only gives the agent instructions.

This matters for accuracy. The skill does not fetch sources on its own, so what the agent can find depends on its own search access, and that data may be out of date. Check the sources it lists before you rely on any figure.

• Requires: nothing listed
• Runs scripts: no
• Uses network: no
• Files: agents/openai.yaml and SKILL.md

Safety notes and limits

Because the skill runs no scripts and makes no network calls, installing it does not add executable code to your machine. Its effect comes from the instructions the agent follows. Whether live data is retrieved depends on the tools your agent already has.

The skill is a research method, not a substitute for expert review. Legal, financial or investment decisions that need professional advice should go to a qualified person.

• Verify figures against the cited sources before using them in a pitch or plan
• Treat market size numbers as estimates unless a source is given
• Do not rely on it alone for legal, financial or investment decisions

Tips for better research output

Give the agent the decision you face and the constraints you have. A request tied to a choice produces a recommendation section you can act on. Ask for the sources list explicitly if you need to check claims later.

If the output looks thin, ask the agent to state which claims it could not source and which assumptions it made. The quality gate in the skill expects these to be labelled.

• State the decision: build, fund, enter, or pass
• Name your competitors or investors if you already have a list
• Ask for explicit assumptions behind any market size
• Ask which data is stale or unverified