Strategy Lead
Tracking Competitor Launches on Hacker News — We Knew Before Their Blog Post
Key Takeaway
AI agents monitor Hacker News for competitor submissions in real-time — when CrewAI posted their 3.0 launch, we had a sentiment analysis and feature comparison before their blog post went live.
The Problem
Competitors launch things. Sometimes you find out from a customer asking "did you see what CrewAI just shipped?" Sometimes from a VC forwarding a tweet. Sometimes from stumbling across it three weeks later.
In the AI agent framework space, launches happen fast. CrewAI, LangChain, AutoGen, AgentGPT — they all ship frequently and loudly. Hacker News is often where launches appear first, before the blog post is even indexed by Google.
If you're not watching, you're reacting. And by the time you react, the narrative is already set.
We needed a system that monitors HN for any competitor activity and delivers competitive intelligence in real-time — not a weekly summary, not a monthly report. The moment it happens.
The Solution
The Hacker News Scraper skill on Mr.Chief, configured for real-time competitor monitoring. The agent checks every 30 minutes for new submissions mentioning our competitor set. When it finds one, it runs a mini-analysis: sentiment in comments, feature comparison to our capabilities, and recommended response.
The Process
The monitoring configuration:
yamlShow code
# Cron: Competitive HN Monitor
schedule: "*/30 * * * *" # Every 30 minutes
agent: pauly
skill: hacker-news-scraper
competitors:
primary:
- "CrewAI"
- "LangChain"
- "AutoGen"
- "AgentGPT"
secondary:
- "Anthropic"
- "OpenAI"
- "Langflow"
- "Dify"
monitoring:
sources:
- front_page
- new_stories
- show_hn
- ask_hn
lookback: 30m # Match cron interval
min_points: 5 # Filter noise
on_detection:
- classify: "launch|funding|hiring|partnership|criticism|comparison"
- analyze_sentiment: true # Read top 50 comments
- compare_features: true # Against Mr.Chief capabilities
- alert: telegram
- save: /workspace/competitive-intel/hn/
When the agent detects a competitor mention, it runs a three-step analysis:
View details
Step 1: Classification
→ "CrewAI 3.0 — Enterprise Multi-Agent Framework" → LAUNCH
Step 2: Sentiment Analysis (top 50 comments)
→ Positive: 41% ("finally, proper enterprise features")
→ Neutral: 32% ("interesting but how is this different from...")
→ Negative: 27% ("another framework? we have too many")
Step 3: Feature Comparison
→ New in CrewAI 3.0: role-based agents, memory, enterprise SSO
→ Mr.Chief equivalent: ✅ role-based (31 agents), ✅ memory (MEMORY.md),
⚠️ no enterprise SSO (not our market), ✅ actual production deployment
→ Gap: They're marketing "enterprise." We're marketing "actually works."
The alert hits Telegram instantly:
markdownShow code
COMPETITOR ALERT: CrewAI Launch on HN
**"CrewAI 3.0 — Enterprise Multi-Agent Framework"**
247 points | 89 comments | Posted 2h ago
Classification: PRODUCT LAUNCH
**Sentiment Breakdown:**
- Positive: 41% — praise for enterprise features
- Neutral: 32% — comparison questions
- Negative: 27% — framework fatigue
**Feature Gap Analysis:**
| Feature | CrewAI 3.0 | Mr.Chief |
|---------|-----------|---------|
| Role-based agents | ✅ New | ✅ Since day 1 |
| Agent memory | ✅ New | ✅ MEMORY.md |
| Enterprise SSO | ✅ New | ❌ N/A |
| Production deployment | ❓ Claims | ✅ 31 agents live |
**Community Concerns:**
- "How is this different from LangChain agents?"
- "Show me a real deployment, not a demo"
- "The agent framework space is getting crowded"
**Recommended Action:**
Consider engaging in comments with PyratzLabs production
case study. Community is skeptical of demos — we have
real deployments to show.
The weekly rollup compiles all detections:
markdownShow code
# Weekly Competitive HN Report — March 6-12, 2026
| Competitor | Submissions | Total Points | Avg Sentiment |
|-----------|------------|-------------|---------------|
| CrewAI | 3 | 489 | Mixed (41% pos) |
| LangChain | 2 | 312 | Positive (58%) |
| AutoGen | 1 | 87 | Neutral |
| AgentGPT | 0 | — | — |
**Key Narrative Shifts:**
1. "Enterprise" is the new buzzword — CrewAI and LangChain
both pushing enterprise positioning
2. Community fatigue with frameworks that demo well but
don't deploy — opportunity for our "31 agents in
production" story
3. Growing interest in vertical-specific agents vs
general-purpose frameworks
The Results
| Metric | Manual Monitoring | AI Agent Monitor |
|---|---|---|
| Detection speed | Hours to days | Minutes |
| Competitor coverage | Spotty | Comprehensive |
| Sentiment analysis | Gut feel | Quantified |
| Feature comparison | Manual spreadsheet | Automated |
| Weekly report | Someone's Friday task | Auto-generated |
| Cost | Team member's time | $0 (free API) |
Over 90 days, the system detected:
- 12 competitor product launches
- 3 funding announcements
- 7 "vs" comparison posts (Mr.Chief mentioned in 2)
- 4 hiring threads revealing competitor team scaling
- 1 competitor outage discussion (useful for positioning)
Try It Yourself
bashShow code
mrchief skills install hacker-news-scraper
Define your competitor list. Set the cron to 30-minute intervals. The HN Algolia API handles the rest. Every competitor launch, every community reaction, every narrative shift — delivered to your inbox before you'd have found it yourself.
The best competitive intelligence isn't knowing what they launched. It's knowing how the market received it — before they've had time to spin the narrative.
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