Write your competitor’s response to your next move.
Imagine the meeting inside your competitor after it learns about your next move. Build that response from what the competitor can actually see, what it has done before, and what it can plausibly do next.
Try it now
Copy the prompt into your AI tool of choice, then answer its questions as they come.
Paste it into any AI chat to start. For most people, this is all you need.
Everything on this page in one paste: the prompt plus the full plan, every step and what to check. Use it for longer moves, to plan ahead, to share with a colleague, or if your AI can't open links.
How it goes
What the AI will do
- Investigates your planned move and researches the competitor’s own public evidence.
- Uses bounded competitor perspectives to write a plausible internal response and identify implications for your preparation.
What to have ready
- The proposed move, the competitor, and the point at which it would learn about the move.
- Relevant planning material or access where available.
Where you come in
- Settle consequential gaps in the move or scenario.
- Review what the competitor could plausibly know and which implications matter.
What you'll get
A clearly labeled simulated internal competitor response, supported by an evidence note and a few preparation implications—not a claim to know its actual plans.
You're done when
You have a plausible simulated internal competitor memo, a visible boundary between evidence and assumptions, and concrete implications for your own preparation.
These are general instructions, not a description of this user's particular AI system, tools, access, or circumstances. Adapt the method to the user's goal and the capabilities you can actually use, while preserving the activity's essential sequence, review points, and intended result. ### Start with the activity and the user's context Read the complete activity and guide the user through it. Use the activity prompt yourself; the user does not need to paste it again. Keep the responsibilities of the user, the AI, and any colleague clear. Begin with what the user has already supplied. Establish the intended result and resolve missing context through focused questions when needed. Work within the activity's stated scope, permissions, required confirmations, and stopping points, including any deliberate order for introducing information. Make progress with the available information and reasonable, clearly identified assumptions where the activity allows them. ### Check the capabilities needed for this work Inspect relevant available tools, connectors, and data. Use small, relevant, non-destructive checks to establish whether necessary access or a capability actually works. Naming a product does not establish access to it. Let this activity determine what needs checking; do not impose a universal preliminary questionnaire or a full system audit. When useful access is missing: - Explain what you cannot reach and how that material would help. - Investigate practical setup, connection, export, or other access alternatives before asking the user to gather material or troubleshoot. - If progress depends on access, request only the specific user action or permission needed to enable it or provide the material another way. Continue useful independent work while awaiting the response. - Offer to walk the user through an export or upload. Welcome files, links, copied text, rough notes, or an interview as supported by your system and the activity, and use the best available route. If the missing access is optional, continue with what is available. ### Ask focused questions and respect the answers Ask questions only when necessary to complete the work well or satisfy the activity's required review points. Build on answers already supplied. Ask one question at a time, or a small group of closely related questions. Wait on work that depends on the answer, and continue useful work that does not. Explain unfamiliar language with examples where helpful. Confirm answers or decisions you supply on the user's behalf before treating them as the user's final answers or decisions. This does not require separate approval of every sourced finding; follow the activity's specific review requirements. ### Keep evidence and independent contributions distinct Distinguish evidence, inference, and missing information. Check your work against the source material. Use independent agents when your system actually supports delegation and independent investigation or review would improve the work: - Give each agent a bounded brief and the context appropriate to its role. - Keep discovery independent until synthesis where the activity requires it. Preserve any requirement for the user or colleagues to contribute before seeing other explanations. - Follow the activity's stated fallback and any required confirmation when independent agents or fresh contexts are unavailable. Preserve reviewer isolation where required; describe shared-context or sequential passes accurately. ### Produce, check, and revise the result Do the substantive investigation and production. Carry the activity through to the most complete, usable result within its scope, rather than ending with a plan or handing the main work back to the user. When missing information does not prevent useful work, proceed with clearly identified assumptions where the activity permits them. Check the result against the activity's completion criteria. At each substantive delivery, state what is complete and any material unfinished work, assumptions, helpful missing information, and remaining uncertainty. Explain how these affect what the user can use, and help the user revise the result. Preserve the activity's stopping point. Do not turn a rehearsal, investigation, or test-design activity into execution that the user has not authorized. ### Establish the move and the moment Write a plausible internal response from my competitor's perspective to my next move. Start with the move and competitor I have named. Establish the relevant offer, market, timing, and what decision this exercise should help me prepare for. Use supplied records before asking me to reconstruct the plan. If the proposed move is still unsettled, distinguish the settled elements from alternatives and ask a focused question when the scenario depends on the choice. Define the moment of the competitor response: for example, after a public announcement, a visible product release, or a customer begins asking about our offer. Do not silently give the competitor knowledge of a confidential plan. ### Investigate our plan and the competitor evidence Inspect and try relevant available connections. Search our emails, chats, calendar-linked meetings, market intelligence, project documents, planning records, and company data for the move's purpose, intended customers, resources, timing, dependencies, and prior observations of the competitor. Keep source references, dates, and differing versions. Separate our team's assumptions about the competitor from direct evidence. Research the competitor's own public statements, website and offerings, published prices where relevant, announcements, filings or reports where available, leadership interviews, and documented prior actions. Use original sources to establish its business model, public priorities, capabilities, constraints, and observable response patterns. Seek contradictory evidence and avoid treating a marketing claim or old announcement as demonstrated current capacity. Supplement with credible outside reporting when it fills a material gap, identifying the source type. If useful internal access is unavailable, investigate export or connection routes and help obtain a focused brief. If public evidence is thin, narrow the confidence of the simulation instead of filling gaps with invented internal facts. Record what was inspected and what remains uncertain. ### Draw the competitor's knowledge boundary Create a concise scenario brief separating: - What the competitor could observe at the chosen moment. - What it could reasonably infer, and the evidence behind that inference. - What we know privately that it would not know. - Unknown competitor facts that require scenario assumptions. Show me any knowledge-boundary or scenario choice that materially changes the exercise and ask me to settle it. Wait before dependent simulation. Confirm answers you propose on my behalf, but do not require me to approve every sourced finding. Treat any useful alternative scenarios as alternatives, not a combined omniscient competitor. ### Develop bounded internal perspectives Where useful, use separate agents for relevant competitor functions or distinct response scenarios: for example, a product lead assessing feasibility, a commercial lead considering customer exposure, or a finance perspective examining resource tradeoffs. Choose roles from the actual strategic question, not a fixed cast. Give each only the competitor-visible scenario brief, relevant competitor evidence with source references, uncertainties, and a bounded deliverable. Keep our private rationale out of those briefs. Ask each independently what matters to the competitor, what it might decide, which action is feasible, and what would make it choose differently. Require it to distinguish documented facts from simulation. Keep first passes independent until synthesis. Divide broad source sets into manageable investigations, keep a coverage record, and use successive waves if capacity is limited. Without agents, use fresh-session handoffs where possible or separate bounded passes, stating when they share context and cannot provide independent review. Do not impersonate or contact real competitor employees. ### Write the internal response in their voice as a business Reconcile the perspectives into a clearly labeled simulated internal memo from the competitor's viewpoint. Write what its leadership could plausibly circulate internally: what it believes just happened, why it matters to its customers and economics, the seriousness of the threat or opportunity, options considered, and the recommended response with sequencing and resource implications. Allow a plausible response to be limited, delayed, or no action if the evidence supports that. Make the reasoning concrete without inventing exact budgets, confidential discussions, or certain future actions. Keep citations and analytical qualifications in an accompanying evidence note where they would interrupt a natural memo, while ensuring the memo does not present assumptions as known internal facts. ### Check the simulation and sharpen our preparation Have a fresh reviewer where available inspect the memo against the knowledge boundary and source packet. Check for leaked private knowledge, unsupported capability, exaggerated certainty, and a response shaped mainly to flatter our strategy. Revise material failures. Deliver the simulated memo, its evidence and assumption note, and a short account of what it suggests we should prepare for. Distinguish recommended preparations and observable signals from predictions. If multiple plausible responses remain, identify the hinge between them rather than declaring one inevitable. Stop at analysis and preparation; do not launch research outreach or execute a competitive response. These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.
View full AI instructions
Write your competitor’s response to your next move.
What the AI will do
- Investigates your planned move and researches the competitor’s own public evidence.
- Uses bounded competitor perspectives to write a plausible internal response and identify implications for your preparation.
What you can provide
- The proposed move, the competitor, and the point at which it would learn about the move.
- Relevant planning material or access where available.
Where you'll take part
- Settle consequential gaps in the move or scenario.
- Review what the competitor could plausibly know and which implications matter.
What you'll get
A clearly labeled simulated internal competitor response, supported by an evidence note and a few preparation implications—not a claim to know its actual plans.
Activity context
Imagine the meeting inside your competitor after it learns about your next move. Build that response from what the competitor can actually see, what it has done before, and what it can plausibly do next.
For the user
Describe your next move and name the competitor. The AI will investigate your plan, research the competitor, establish what it could know at the chosen moment, and write its plausible internal response. You will clarify consequential scenario choices before the response is finalized.
Guidance for the AI
These are general instructions, not a description of this user's particular AI system, tools, access, or circumstances. Adapt the method to the user's goal and the capabilities you can actually use, while preserving the activity's essential sequence, review points, and intended result.
Start with the activity and the user's context
Read the complete activity and guide the user through it. Use the activity prompt yourself; the user does not need to paste it again. Keep the responsibilities of the user, the AI, and any colleague clear.
Begin with what the user has already supplied. Establish the intended result and resolve missing context through focused questions when needed. Work within the activity's stated scope, permissions, required confirmations, and stopping points, including any deliberate order for introducing information. Make progress with the available information and reasonable, clearly identified assumptions where the activity allows them.
Check the capabilities needed for this work
Inspect relevant available tools, connectors, and data. Use small, relevant, non-destructive checks to establish whether necessary access or a capability actually works. Naming a product does not establish access to it. Let this activity determine what needs checking; do not impose a universal preliminary questionnaire or a full system audit.
When useful access is missing:
- Explain what you cannot reach and how that material would help.
- Investigate practical setup, connection, export, or other access alternatives before asking the user to gather material or troubleshoot.
- If progress depends on access, request only the specific user action or permission needed to enable it or provide the material another way. Continue useful independent work while awaiting the response.
- Offer to walk the user through an export or upload. Welcome files, links, copied text, rough notes, or an interview as supported by your system and the activity, and use the best available route. If the missing access is optional, continue with what is available.
Ask focused questions and respect the answers
Ask questions only when necessary to complete the work well or satisfy the activity's required review points. Build on answers already supplied. Ask one question at a time, or a small group of closely related questions. Wait on work that depends on the answer, and continue useful work that does not. Explain unfamiliar language with examples where helpful.
Confirm answers or decisions you supply on the user's behalf before treating them as the user's final answers or decisions. This does not require separate approval of every sourced finding; follow the activity's specific review requirements.
Keep evidence and independent contributions distinct
Distinguish evidence, inference, and missing information. Check your work against the source material.
Use independent agents when your system actually supports delegation and independent investigation or review would improve the work:
- Give each agent a bounded brief and the context appropriate to its role.
- Keep discovery independent until synthesis where the activity requires it. Preserve any requirement for the user or colleagues to contribute before seeing other explanations.
- Follow the activity's stated fallback and any required confirmation when independent agents or fresh contexts are unavailable. Preserve reviewer isolation where required; describe shared-context or sequential passes accurately.
Produce, check, and revise the result
Do the substantive investigation and production. Carry the activity through to the most complete, usable result within its scope, rather than ending with a plan or handing the main work back to the user. When missing information does not prevent useful work, proceed with clearly identified assumptions where the activity permits them.
Check the result against the activity's completion criteria. At each substantive delivery, state what is complete and any material unfinished work, assumptions, helpful missing information, and remaining uncertainty. Explain how these affect what the user can use, and help the user revise the result.
Preserve the activity's stopping point. Do not turn a rehearsal, investigation, or test-design activity into execution that the user has not authorized.
Your AI prompt
Establish the move and the moment
Write a plausible internal response from my competitor's perspective to my next move. Start with the move and competitor I have named. Establish the relevant offer, market, timing, and what decision this exercise should help me prepare for. Use supplied records before asking me to reconstruct the plan. If the proposed move is still unsettled, distinguish the settled elements from alternatives and ask a focused question when the scenario depends on the choice.
Define the moment of the competitor response: for example, after a public announcement, a visible product release, or a customer begins asking about our offer. Do not silently give the competitor knowledge of a confidential plan.
Investigate our plan and the competitor evidence
Inspect and try relevant available connections. Search our emails, chats, calendar-linked meetings, market intelligence, project documents, planning records, and company data for the move's purpose, intended customers, resources, timing, dependencies, and prior observations of the competitor. Keep source references, dates, and differing versions. Separate our team's assumptions about the competitor from direct evidence.
Research the competitor's own public statements, website and offerings, published prices where relevant, announcements, filings or reports where available, leadership interviews, and documented prior actions. Use original sources to establish its business model, public priorities, capabilities, constraints, and observable response patterns. Seek contradictory evidence and avoid treating a marketing claim or old announcement as demonstrated current capacity. Supplement with credible outside reporting when it fills a material gap, identifying the source type.
If useful internal access is unavailable, investigate export or connection routes and help obtain a focused brief. If public evidence is thin, narrow the confidence of the simulation instead of filling gaps with invented internal facts. Record what was inspected and what remains uncertain.
Draw the competitor's knowledge boundary
Create a concise scenario brief separating:
- What the competitor could observe at the chosen moment.
- What it could reasonably infer, and the evidence behind that inference.
- What we know privately that it would not know.
- Unknown competitor facts that require scenario assumptions.
Show me any knowledge-boundary or scenario choice that materially changes the exercise and ask me to settle it. Wait before dependent simulation. Confirm answers you propose on my behalf, but do not require me to approve every sourced finding. Treat any useful alternative scenarios as alternatives, not a combined omniscient competitor.
Develop bounded internal perspectives
Where useful, use separate agents for relevant competitor functions or distinct response scenarios: for example, a product lead assessing feasibility, a commercial lead considering customer exposure, or a finance perspective examining resource tradeoffs. Choose roles from the actual strategic question, not a fixed cast.
Give each only the competitor-visible scenario brief, relevant competitor evidence with source references, uncertainties, and a bounded deliverable. Keep our private rationale out of those briefs. Ask each independently what matters to the competitor, what it might decide, which action is feasible, and what would make it choose differently. Require it to distinguish documented facts from simulation.
Keep first passes independent until synthesis. Divide broad source sets into manageable investigations, keep a coverage record, and use successive waves if capacity is limited. Without agents, use fresh-session handoffs where possible or separate bounded passes, stating when they share context and cannot provide independent review. Do not impersonate or contact real competitor employees.
Write the internal response in their voice as a business
Reconcile the perspectives into a clearly labeled simulated internal memo from the competitor's viewpoint. Write what its leadership could plausibly circulate internally: what it believes just happened, why it matters to its customers and economics, the seriousness of the threat or opportunity, options considered, and the recommended response with sequencing and resource implications.
Allow a plausible response to be limited, delayed, or no action if the evidence supports that. Make the reasoning concrete without inventing exact budgets, confidential discussions, or certain future actions. Keep citations and analytical qualifications in an accompanying evidence note where they would interrupt a natural memo, while ensuring the memo does not present assumptions as known internal facts.
Check the simulation and sharpen our preparation
Have a fresh reviewer where available inspect the memo against the knowledge boundary and source packet. Check for leaked private knowledge, unsupported capability, exaggerated certainty, and a response shaped mainly to flatter our strategy. Revise material failures.
Deliver the simulated memo, its evidence and assumption note, and a short account of what it suggests we should prepare for. Distinguish recommended preparations and observable signals from predictions. If multiple plausible responses remain, identify the hinge between them rather than declaring one inevitable. Stop at analysis and preparation; do not launch research outreach or execute a competitive response.
Done when
You have a plausible simulated internal competitor memo, a visible boundary between evidence and assumptions, and concrete implications for your own preparation.
These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.
These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.