competitor-alternatives

Trigger phrases

Phrases that activate this skill when typed to Claude Code:

• alternative page
• vs page
• competitor comparison
• [Product] alternative
• battle card

What it does

competitor-alternatives is a Claude Code skill from Corey Haines’s marketing-skills repo. It turns Claude into a comparison-page specialist who builds four distinct page formats — singular alternative (“[Product] alternative”), plural alternatives (“Best [Product] alternatives”), you-vs-competitor, and competitor-vs-competitor — each tuned for the search intent behind the query. The skill activates when you mention “alternative page”, “vs page”, “comparison page”, or “[Product] vs [Product]”.

The output of a session is a structured comparison page: positioning hook, balanced feature table, criteria-based scoring, pricing transparency, and the genuine “we’re not the right fit if…” section that prevents the page from reading like a hatchet job.

When to use it

Reach for it when:

• You’re being compared to a clear named competitor and want to own that SERP
• You’re in a category leader’s shadow and need “Best [leader] alternatives” pages
• Sales keeps asking for comparison content they can send to evaluators

When not to reach for it:

• You don’t have a real differentiation story — the page can’t manufacture one
• You’re targeting a competitor whose lawyers are aggressive about trademark claims

Install

The skill is distributed via Corey Haines’s marketing-skills repo. Install via the repo’s recommended path — copy the competitor-alternatives SKILL.md into your project’s .claude/skills/competitor-alternatives/ directory, or use the repo’s plugin install if you’ve set it up.

Once installed, the skill activates on the trigger phrases above. The first time it runs, it will check for .agents/product-marketing-context.md (or .claude/product-marketing-context.md) — populating that file with your product context first dramatically improves output quality across all of Haines’s marketing skills.

What a session looks like

A typical session has three phases:

1. Format selection. “[Product] alternative” (one competitor, replacement intent), “Best alternatives” (listicle), “You vs competitor” (head-to-head), or “Competitor vs competitor” (referee position to capture both queries).
2. Comparison table. Specific criteria, balanced scoring, real pricing, honest tradeoffs. The skill refuses to mark you as “winner” on every row — that’s a credibility killer.
3. Hook + close. The “we’re better when…” and “they’re better when…” sections, schema markup for rich results, and internal-link suggestions to feature pages.

The discipline that makes it work: AI Overviews and human evaluators both penalize obviously biased comparisons. The skill optimizes for citation by being fair, not by being flattering.

Receipts

Honest reporting on what competitor-alternatives produces and where it has limits:

Where it works well:

• The four-format taxonomy maps cleanly to four distinct searcher intents — most teams pick one and miss three
• Balanced scoring earns AI citations that biased pages don’t
• The “they’re better when” section is what makes the page believable

Where it backfires:

• If the competitor has more features than you, the skill won’t pretend otherwise — you’re forced to compete on dimension, not depth
• Trademark-sensitive industries (legal, finance) need a legal pass before publishing

Pattern that works: ship the “[Leader] alternative” page first if you’re in the leader’s shadow — it captures evaluators who already know they’re churning. Build the “you vs them” page second, once the alternative page is ranking.

Source and attribution

Originally written by Corey Haines. The canonical SKILL.md and any supporting files live in the competitor-alternatives folder of his marketing-skills repository.

License: MIT. You can install, adapt, and redistribute the skill, with attribution preserved.

This page documents the skill from a practitioner’s perspective. For the formal spec and any updates, defer to the source repo.