Six steps in order, with monitoring running alongside
Your part and Vector’s part
The chain, step by step
1
Describe your product
On My product, write one line about what you’re building and click Next — AI writes the description. AI drafts a full description from it; you correct whatever’s off and approve it. That description is the context every AI step afterwards runs against — competitor search, research, comparison. Optional research steps on the same screen can enrich it further. See Describe your product.
2
Find competitors
✦ AI find competitors searches for products that match your description. You sort what it finds into two lists: the Short list holds the direct competitors you always watch, the Long list the wider field you keep on record. You can move a competitor between them at any time. See Add competitors.
3
Collect a dossier on each competitor
A competitor’s dossier holds everything Vector learns about them: a deep teardown of their product, their public sources, pricing, help center, changelog, and the features they offer. Fill it in one competitor at a time, or select several in the list and pick an action — 🔬 Deep research, ✦ Feature scan, 💲 Pricing and others — to run it for all of them at once.This is the step that feeds everything after it. As dossiers fill in, the features Vector finds in them build up into a catalog of what your market offers.
4
Work through the features in your domain
Features → Features in domain in the left menu is that catalog: every capability at least one competitor offers, whether or not you have it yourself. It works with two kinds of entries:
- A feature has a dossier of its own, which draws in everything known about it: how each competitor implements it, what their users say, and where they seem to be heading with it.
- A candidate is what a source said that isn’t a feature yet. Nothing research finds goes straight into the catalog: it waits in Candidates until you decide — attach it to an existing feature, turn it into a new one, or dismiss it as noise.
5
Organize the product map
Once the catalog grows, a flat list stops being readable. The product map groups features into clusters — broad domains, such as Talent Acquisition or Payroll and Benefits in an HR product — and narrower areas inside them. A feature can sit in an area or directly in its cluster.AI helps with the structure: Suggest structure (AI) proposes new clusters with areas inside, and you accept or discard each one. When many features pile up directly in one cluster, the map suggests grouping them into areas. Every cluster and area has its own page with an analysis: how many of its features you have, where your gaps are, and how much of it each competitor covers.
6
Plan delivery
Monitoring alongside the chain
Monitoring doesn’t wait for the chain to finish. In a competitor’s dossier, the Resources tab lists their public sources — release notes, changelog, blog, pricing, help center, social accounts — and each source has a Monitoring switch. Turn it on, and Vector checks that source on a schedule. The first check only records a baseline. After that, whenever something changes, Vector analyzes the change, sends a notification to your Inbox, and writes it to the log in that competitor’s dossier. Monitoring in the left menu shows the whole picture: how many competitors and sources are watched, and the latest changes across all of them. See Put a competitor under monitoring.Glossary
Where to go next
What Vector is
Why Vector exists, and what you need before you start.
Set up your workspace
The checklist that walks you through the chain in order.