Market Research Agent - Community Signal Intelligence
Scheduling
Goal
Run the upstream last30days research engine (always the latest release, managed by oma) for community-signal research, then frame the result for the user's intent (pain / trend / competitor / discovery) with strategic frameworks and save one brief under .agents/results/market/.
Intent signature
- User asks about pain points, user complaints, or voice-of-customer signals for a product or category.
- User asks what is trending, growing, or declining in a space this week or month.
- User asks how one product compares to another in community sentiment or positioning.
- User asks for discovery or exploratory market research on a topic, a person, a company, or a ticker.
When to use
- Extracting real user pain points from community posts (Reddit with real upvotes and top comments, HN, X, Bluesky, GitHub Issues)
- Detecting trends in a category over a window (
--days 7|30|90|180)
- Competitor sentiment analysis and SWOT / Porter's 5F positioning
- Open-ended discovery research (
--discover), person mode, hiring signals (--hiring-signals), follow-up drills (--drill)
When NOT to use
- General web research without market framing -> use oma-search directly
- Academic literature -> use oma-scholar
- Live dashboards or scheduled monitoring ->
oma schedule <action> wrapping this skill
Expected inputs
- Topic string; optional
--intent pain|trend|competitor|discovery (else classified per resources/intent-rules.md)
- Optional window (
--days), --vs <entity> (competitor), --frameworks auto|none|swot,5f,pestel
- Any native last30days flag (see
oma market run --help) — passed through verbatim
Expected outputs
- Single markdown brief at
.agents/results/market/{topic-slug}-{YYYYMMDD}.md
- First line: the engine's badge (
🌐 last30days v{VERSION} · synced {date}); body per the upstream OUTPUT CONTRACT; framework sections appended per intent; engine footer preserved
- Raw engine artifacts under
market.save_dir (default .agents/results/market/raw/)
outputs:
- name: market-brief
description: Single LAW-compliant markdown brief with framework sections
artifact: ".agents/results/market/*.md"
required: true
Dependencies
oma market resolve / oma market run — engine location, Python 3.12+ resolution, --save-dir default- The upstream
SKILL.md at the resolved engine root (skillMd in oma market resolve --json) — the authoritative research contract
resources/intent-rules.md, resources/frameworks/, resources/output-laws.md, resources/execution-protocol.md
Control-flow features
oma market detect-trap gate before anything else (exit 2 = REFUSE, exit 4 = invalid)- Engine is always the latest release:
oma market resolve refreshes the managed copy (throttled) and falls back to the cached copy offline; a pinned market.path / LAST30DAYS_HOME opts out
- Sources needing keys/cookies auto-skip inside the engine; keyless sources (Reddit, HN, GitHub, Polymarket, arXiv, Techmeme, Digg, web) always run
- Framework auto-toggle by intent (pain/trend → SWOT; competitor → SWOT + Porter's 5F; discovery → SWOT + PESTEL)
Structural Flow
Entry
- Run
oma market detect-trap "<topic>". Exit 2 → surface the REFUSE reason and reframe suggestion, stop.
- Run
oma market resolve --json. ok: false → report reason (missing engine → oma market update; missing Python → the install hint) and stop. Never fall back to WebSearch-only synthesis and present it as market research.
- Read the upstream contract at
engine.skillMd top to bottom. It is long by design; do not skim. Treat engine.root as its SKILL_DIR.
- Classify intent per
resources/intent-rules.md; map to engine flags and framework set.
Scenes
- PREPARE: detect-trap, resolve, read upstream SKILL.md, classify intent.
- UPSTREAM STEPS: follow the upstream SKILL.md exactly — Step 0 (first-run setup wizard, consent-driven), intent parsing, Step 0.45 (its own query-quality preflight), Step 0.5 / 0.55 (handle, subreddit, hashtag resolution when WebSearch is available), Step 0.75 (query plan). Skip only its "Runtime Preflight" Python-hunt block:
oma market run already resolved the interpreter.
- RUN: wherever the upstream contract says
"${LAST30DAYS_PYTHON}" "${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/last30days.py" <args>, run oma market run <args> with the same arguments (foreground, 5-minute timeout, --emit=compact). --save-dir is added automatically from market.save_dir unless you pass one.
- SYNTHESIZE: produce the brief exactly as the upstream OUTPUT CONTRACT dictates (badge first line, Ranked Evidence Clusters, LAWs). Then append the framework sections selected for the intent, using only clusters present in the engine output as evidence (
resources/frameworks/).
- FINALIZE: run the self-check in
resources/output-laws.md, write .agents/results/market/{topic-slug}-{YYYYMMDD}.md, preview the first 50 lines.
Transitions
--vs <entity> or "A vs B" phrasing → competitor intent → upstream COMPARISON flow (two passes + head-to-head as its contract specifies) → SWOT + Porter's 5F.- Person / company / ticker topics → upstream person / hiring-signals / StockTwits handling applies unchanged.
engine.status: stale → include the note in the report (research ran on the cached engine version).
Failure and recovery
- detect-trap exit 2 → REFUSE; do not run the engine;
--force only on explicit user reconfirmation.
oma market resolve not ok → stop with the reason; no engine run.- Engine non-zero exit → report stderr verbatim; do not synthesize from partial stdout unless the upstream contract says the emitted compact output is still valid.
- Upstream Python-version gate / setup wizard messages → relay to the user exactly as the upstream contract instructs.
Exit
- Success: brief written with badge, clusters, frameworks, and engine footer; path reported.
- Partial: engine ran with skipped sources (footer lists them) — say so; never pad with invented evidence.
Logical Operations
Actions
| Action | SSL primitive | Evidence |
|---|
| detect-trap preflight | VALIDATE | Topic arg, trap pattern rules |
| Resolve engine + Python | CALL_TOOL | oma market resolve --json |
| Read upstream contract | READ | engine.skillMd |
| Classify intent | SELECT | resources/intent-rules.md |
| Upstream pre-research steps | INFER | Upstream SKILL.md Steps 0–0.75 |
| Run engine | CALL_TOOL | oma market run <args> |
| Synthesize + frameworks | WRITE | Upstream OUTPUT CONTRACT, resources/frameworks/ |
| Self-check + write brief | WRITE | resources/output-laws.md, .agents/results/market/ |
Tools and instruments
oma market detect-trap <topic> (preflight gate)oma market resolve [--refresh|--offline] [--json] (engine + Python resolution; managed latest)oma market update (force-refresh the managed engine)oma market run <engine args…> (passthrough to the resolved upstream engine’s Python entry point)
Canonical command path
TOPIC="VS Code pain points"
oma market detect-trap "$TOPIC"
oma market resolve --json # read .engine.skillMd, then follow it
# … upstream Steps 0 / 0.45 / 0.5 / 0.55 / 0.75 …
oma market run "$TOPIC" --plan "$QUERY_PLAN_FILE" --subreddits=vscode --emit=compact --save-suffix=v3
Resource scope
| Scope | Resource target |
|---|
NETWORK | Inside the engine only (its per-source fetchers); GitHub for the managed engine refresh |
LOCAL_FS | ~/.cache/oma-market/last30days/<tag>/ (engine), ~/.config/last30days/ (engine config, keys), .agents/results/market/ (brief + raw) |
PROCESS | oma market subcommands → the resolved upstream Python entry point |
Preconditions
- Topic passes detect-trap.
oma market resolve is ok (engine present; Python ≥ 3.12 found on PATH, via uv, or pinned with market.python / LAST30DAYS_PYTHON).
Effects and side effects
- Writes the brief to
.agents/results/market/{topic-slug}-{YYYYMMDD}.md and raw engine files to market.save_dir.
- First run: the upstream setup wizard may write
~/.config/last30days/.env (with user consent) and, when Python 3.12 is absent but uv exists, may install a managed CPython 3.12 (~28 MB) after telling the user.
References
- Execution protocol:
resources/execution-protocol.md
- Intent routing:
resources/intent-rules.md
- Output contract:
resources/output-laws.md
- Applicable framework:
resources/frameworks/swot.md, resources/frameworks/porters-5f.md, or resources/frameworks/pestel.md (load only the selected framework)
- Validation:
resources/checklist.md
- Recovery:
resources/error-playbook.md
- Upstream engine instructions: read the resolved
engine.skillMd path from oma market resolve --json; upstream scripts are managed engine files, not bundled skill resources.
