strategyplaybook.aiSqwyz
Sign in
← All 124 tools
Research · Diagnose, Explore, Review

Signal scan

Reads the public traces competitors and markets leave — filings, job ads, patents, price changes, hiring — to see what is coming before it is announced. Only useful with a review rhythm.

The printable canvas and the handoff into Claude Code are part of a paid plan. See what a plan includes. It needs the Claude desktop app on this machine, and your team and the prompt library already installed in that project — we cannot see your disk, so open it there.

Stage
01 Diagnose, 02 Explore, 05 Review
Works at
Corporate, Business
Maturity
Early startup → Large organisation
Time
Two days to set up, an hour a month to run

What it is

Ongoing monitoring of the public traces organisations leave, on the basis that strategy becomes visible in hiring, filings and investment well before it is announced. Its value comes from repetition — the change between periods, not any single reading.

Watch list
The specific companies, markets and topics being monitored. Bounded, or the exercise drowns.
Signal sources
Job adverts, filed accounts, planning applications, patents, executive appointments, price pages, tender awards. Things that change before announcements.
Collection rhythm
Alerts and scheduled checks rather than periodic manual sweeps. The comparison between periods is where the information is.
Interpretation
Reading signals in combination. Individually they are noise; a pattern across three sources is a strategy becoming legible.
Escalation threshold
What would justify telling someone immediately, and who. Without it the scan produces a circulated document and no decisions.
The mistake people makeRun once, this returns a page of unconnected facts. It only earns its keep as a standing process with somewhere for the output to go — set up the rhythm and the forum, or do not start.
What it’s forYou want an early read on what competitors and the market are about to do, from public traces.
What it’s not forYou have no cadence to review it. A one-off scan is a snapshot of noise.

How you run it

  1. Decide what you are watching forSpecific questions — is anyone building a direct channel, is capacity being added, is pricing moving. Watching everything produces noise.
  2. Pick sources that leak reliablyJob adverts, filed accounts, planning applications, patent filings, executive hires, price pages. These change before announcements do.
  3. Set up the collection so it repeatsAlerts, saved searches, a scheduled check. A one-off scan is a snapshot; the value is in the difference between months.
  4. Interpret in combinationOne signal is noise. A hiring pattern plus a capacity investment plus a price move is a strategy becoming visible.
  5. Define what triggers escalationWhat would you tell someone about immediately? Without a threshold, the scan becomes a report that circulates and changes nothing.

The prompt

Two ways to run it

Run this tool in your own Claude

The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.

🔒 Prompt locked

Everything above is free — what this tool is, what it is for, what it is not for, and how to run it as a workshop. Three tool prompts a month are free with an account; beyond three, and for the printable canvas, it is the paid part.

See plans — from £19 a month

Your playbook

It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.

You’ll need

  • A defined watch list of companies and topics
  • Sources that update: filings, job boards, patents, press
  • A forum that will actually look at the output

You’ll end up with

  • A monitored signal set with sources
  • A monthly read of what changed
  • Escalation when a signal crosses a threshold

Runs well with

Acquisition screen and synergy thesisAdjacency mapAfter action reviewAI opportunity map