competitive-positioning

# competitive-positioning ## When to use - A peer / reference / competitor repository was named and the team needs a structured comparison, not a vibes summary. - A pattern from another package is being considered for adoption and the trade-off needs to land in writing. - Positioning prose for a README / launch / pricing page needs an ours-vs-theirs decisions table to anchor on. Do NOT use for general repo audits (route to `analyze-reference-repo`), upstream-contribution decisions (route to `upstream-contribute`), or DCF-style valuation work (route to `dcf-modeling`). ## Cognition cluster - **Mental model 1 — First principles.** Strip the comparison to the outcome each package promises its user, not the feature lists. Two packages with overlapping features can promise different outcomes and therefore are not direct competitors. See [`docs/contracts/mental-models.md`](../../../docs/contracts/mental-models.md) § 1. - **Mental model 24 — Optionality.** A pattern that costs little to adopt and preserves exit value beats a "better" pattern that locks the package in. Score adoption cost AND exit cost on every row. See `mental-models.md` § 24. - **Mental model 12 — Inversion.** For each axis, ask *"what would we do if we wanted to lose on this axis?"* The answer surfaces the invariants the comparison must preserve. See `mental-models.md` § 12. - **Product context-spine slot.** Read the **product** slot for segment / focal job / non-goals before picking axes;...