Competitive research

Competitive research is one of those things everyone does and nobody does well. You screenshot a competitor's pricing page. You save an article about their funding round. You take notes after a sales call where a prospect mentioned them. You bookmark their blog post. And then, three months later, when someone asks "what's their positioning on enterprise?" you're digging through screenshots, browser history, and old notes trying to piece it together. The research happened. The problem is that it's scattered across so many places that when you actually need it, it's faster to start again than to find what you already have.

This page is for product managers, founders, strategists, and anyone tracking competitors who needs one place to collect everything they find, with search that can pull up any detail instantly.

The problem

Competitor intel arrives in every format, from every direction. A pricing page screenshot here, a press article there, notes from a sales call, a slide deck someone forwarded, a tweet thread, a job listing that reveals their strategy. No two pieces of competitive intelligence look the same or live in the same place, so the picture is fragmented from the start.

You can't search across it. The screenshot is on your desktop. The article is in a bookmark folder. The call notes are in a doc somewhere. When you need to pull together everything you know about a competitor's approach to a specific market, there's no way to ask that question across all of it. You're left manually hunting through tools and hoping you remember where each piece ended up.

It goes stale in silence. Competitive landscapes change constantly. A pricing page you screenshotted six months ago might be outdated, but if you can't even find it, you can't compare it to what's current. Without a system that lets you see the history of what you've collected, you lose the ability to track how a competitor is evolving over time.

What Fabric changes

Everything about every competitor lives in one place. Screenshots, articles, notes, reports, decks, emails, and bookmarks all go into Fabric, regardless of format. One search surfaces everything you've ever collected about a competitor, across every source type.

You find details by meaning, not by memory. Search in plain language and Fabric finds the relevant screenshot, article, note, or slide, even if you can't remember when you saved it or what you called it. Ask "what does [competitor] charge enterprise customers" and get the pricing screenshot, the call notes where a prospect mentioned it, and the article that covered their latest pricing change, together.

The history is visible. Because everything is saved and searchable over time, you can see how a competitor's positioning, pricing, hiring, or product has changed. The screenshot from six months ago is findable alongside the one from last week, so you're tracking a trajectory, not just a snapshot.

How it works

Search across all your competitive intel. Fabric's AI search reads inside every file type, including text in screenshots and images. Ask about a competitor's strategy and get results from across your notes, screenshots, articles, and reports, however they were saved.

An AI analyst for your competitive library. The AI assistant works from your saved material. Ask it to summarise everything you know about a competitor, compare two competitors on a specific dimension, or identify what's changed since you last looked. It synthesises from your collected intel, not from generic internet results.

Capture from anywhere. Screenshot a pricing page, clip an article with the web clipper, forward a competitive alert email to your email-to-note address, save a PDF, or photograph a whiteboard from a strategy session. Everything lands in the same searchable library.

Annotate what you find. Annotate directly on screenshots, reports, and articles. Mark up a competitor's pricing table or highlight the key claim in a press release, and those annotations become searchable alongside the source.

Organise by competitor or track. Use spaces to group material by competitor, by market segment, or by theme (pricing, positioning, product, hiring). Search still works across all of them, so you get focused views and broad queries.

See the landscape visually. Spread competitors, sources, and notes across the canvas to map positioning, compare approaches, or plan your response. Spatial thinking helps when you're working with a complex competitive landscape.

A competitive research workflow in Fabric

Create a space per competitor. Give each key competitor its own space so the material is grouped and browsable. Add a general "landscape" space for industry-wide intel that doesn't belong to a single competitor.

Capture everything as you encounter it. Don't wait for a formal research session. Screenshot a pricing page when you notice it changed. Clip an article when it appears in your feed. Forward the email when a colleague shares a competitor's deck. The value is in capturing consistently, not in doing research in batches.

Before a strategy meeting, ask. Search for a competitor or a theme across all your material. Ask the assistant to summarise what you've collected about a competitor's recent moves, or compare two competitors on pricing. Walk into the meeting with a synthesis rather than scattered notes.

Track changes over time. When you notice a competitor has changed their positioning or pricing, save the new version. Over months, the space becomes a timeline of their evolution, searchable and comparable.

Share what's relevant. When a teammate or stakeholder needs a competitive briefing, publish a curated collection with password protection and analytics, so you control access and know who viewed it.

What compounds over time

Competitive research is inherently cumulative. A single screenshot tells you what a competitor is doing today. Six months of captured screenshots, articles, call notes, and reports tells you what they're doing, where they're heading, and how their strategy has shifted. The more consistently you capture, the more complete the picture becomes, and the more useful the AI's synthesis gets.

Teams that maintain competitive libraries in Fabric stop repeating the same research before every strategy meeting. The intelligence is already there, searchable, and up to date. New hires get context on the competitive landscape without someone walking them through it. And the AI gets better at answering competitive questions the more material it has to draw on.

Related use cases

For broader industry-level research, see market research. For the general research process, see research projects. If this competitive library is part of a larger knowledge system, second brain covers the lifelong approach. For sharing competitive intel with prospects, see sales collateral. Fabric is built for marketers and researchers.

Get started

Start collecting everything you find about your competitors in one searchable place, and stop losing the intel you've already gathered. Try Fabric free.

FAQs

Can Fabric read text inside screenshots?

Yes. Fabric reads text in images and screenshots, so a captured pricing page, job listing, or product screenshot is searchable by its content, not just its filename.

Can I search across everything I've saved about a specific competitor?

Yes. Search by competitor name, by topic, or by any detail you remember, and Fabric returns results from across every source type: screenshots, notes, articles, PDFs, annotated reports, and emails.

Can the AI compare two competitors for me?

Yes. Ask the assistant to compare competitors on a specific dimension (pricing, positioning, feature set, target market) and it synthesises from your saved material about both. The quality of the comparison improves the more intel you've collected on each.

Can I track how a competitor's positioning has changed over time?

Yes. Every saved screenshot, article, and note is timestamped and searchable. When you save updates over time, the space becomes a searchable timeline of how a competitor has evolved.

Can I share competitive briefings with my team?

Yes. Publish a curated collection or summary with password protection and analytics. You control who has access and can see when they've viewed it.

Can I forward competitive alerts and emails into Fabric?

Yes. Forward any email to your email-to-note address and it arrives as a searchable item in your library. Useful for competitive alert subscriptions, forwarded articles from colleagues, and sales intel from the field.

Can I annotate a competitor's pricing page or product screenshot?

Yes. Annotate directly on any image, screenshot, or document. Your markup becomes searchable alongside the source.

How is this different from a shared Google Drive folder of competitor info?

A folder stores files by name and location. Fabric makes everything searchable by meaning, reads text inside screenshots and images, and gives you an AI assistant that can synthesise across your entire competitive library. The difference is being able to ask "what does [competitor] say about enterprise security" and get an answer, rather than opening files one at a time.

Can multiple team members contribute to the same competitive library?

Yes. Share a space with your team and everyone can add material and search across the whole collection. Everyone's captures are findable by the whole group.

Does it connect to tools like Google Drive or Notion where I might already have competitive intel?

Yes. Fabric connects to Google Drive, Notion, Dropbox, and Gmail, so you can pull in existing material without starting from scratch.

Is competitive intel kept private?

Yes. Your content is encrypted and only visible to you, or to the team members you've shared a space with. Nothing is accessible to anyone you haven't explicitly invited.