Blueprint
Who is already circling, and where does that come from?
Checked on 6 Oct 20263 min read
Why it works this way
Discover Agents assumes someone is already working on it, even if that someone is a spreadsheet, and maps the gap each one leaves.
Founders want to hear that nobody has done this. So the page starts from the opposite assumption, and the status quo is on the list too. Every item in What's been tried and Why it's buildable now links to a page we read, and an item we cannot link is dropped. Rivals link to the page we found them on where we have one.
What we gave up: any claim a page cannot support, and the comfort of an empty list.
What it is
Three sections at the foot of the Blueprint come from one live scan of the web, which runs by itself, once, when the page is made:
- Who's circling. Products and companies already working on something close. Each entry says what they do and The gap they leave. Entries are tiered: Direct (the same thing for the same people), Adjacent (a nearby problem for the same people), Incumbent (the big player these people already pay) and Status quo. The status quo is not a company. It is what people do instead today, like a spreadsheet or a phone call, and it is usually the hardest thing to beat.
- What's been tried. Products that took a run at this and pivoted or shut down. Each says what happened and Why it matters. It is not a verdict on your idea. It is a list of the ways this goes wrong.
- Why it's buildable now. The specific, recent capabilities that make the agent possible at all, each linked to a page we read.
How to use it
- Read Who's circling first. For each rival, read the gap. That is where your agent has to be different.
- Open the links. A named product links to the page we found it on, where we have one. The status quo has no link, because it is not a company. Check the links yourself.
- Read What's been tried before you fall for the idea. It says why the last attempt did not work.
- Read Why it's buildable now. If it is thin, your case for building now rests on what you have seen in the market and not on new technology.
What it will never do
- Tell you the field is wide open. When the scan surfaces no named rival, the page says exactly that, and it is worth questioning, not celebrating.
- Show a failed attempt or a capability it cannot link to a page.
- Treat a missing scan as a finding. If nobody looked, the section says so.
If something looks off
- "Looking now." The scan is running. It takes a moment.
- "Nobody has looked yet." The scan has not run for this board. An empty list here means nothing.
- "Nobody looked." At busy times a live search may be skipped. The rest of the board still builds. An empty list below it means nothing.
- "The look-up did not come back." The scan failed. Try the scan again runs it once more.
- "The scan surfaced no named rivals." Worth questioning. Either nobody is working on this, or the people who are cannot be found on the open web.
- "Nothing tried-and-abandoned surfaced." That is what the scan could see, not a promise that nothing was tried.
- An older board. Boards made before the scan existed may lack these sections.