03-competitive-analysis

Competitive Analysis

Agent researches competitors, crawls their sites, and produces a structured market analysis.

Prerequisites

• sandcaster CLI installed (from monorepo: cd apps/cli && bun link)

Setup

export E2B_API_KEY="your-key"       # https://e2b.dev/dashboard
export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-key"    # https://platform.openai.com/api-keys

Run

sandcaster "Analyze the CRM market: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive"

What Happens

The agent fetches competitor websites, analyzes positioning and features, and returns a structured JSON report with competitor profiles, market insights, and recommendations.

Configuration

See sandcaster.json for the full configuration. Key settings:

• model: gpt5 (OpenAI gpt-5.4 — cost-efficient default)
• maxTurns: 20 (enough for multi-site research)
• outputFormat: JSON schema for competitive analysis report

Troubleshooting

• "No LLM provider API key found": Set OPENAI_API_KEY in your environment
• "E2B_API_KEY not set": Get a key at https://e2b.dev/dashboard
• Model not available: Replace gpt5 with sonnet or haiku in sandcaster.json