Consulting Analysis

Purpose

Convert an ambiguous business or product question into a clear, evidence-backed recommendation with assumptions, options, risks, and next decisions.

When to Use

Use for:

• strategy memos, product/business case analysis, market-entry framing, operational diagnosis, or option comparison
• MECE issue trees, hypotheses, criteria, tradeoff tables, and executive summaries
• turning research notes into a decision-ready recommendation

Do not use for:

• regulated legal, investment, tax, medical, or HR advice
• numeric analysis of a dataset; use data-analysis
• chart design; use chart-visualization
• implementing the recommendation

Workflow

1. Clarify the decision owner, decision deadline, success metric, constraints, and non-goals.
2. Frame the problem as a decision question, then split it into MECE drivers or hypotheses.
3. Inventory evidence by source type and reliability. Mark assumptions separately from facts.
4. Compare options against explicit criteria: impact, cost, speed, risk, reversibility, evidence strength, and strategic fit.
5. Synthesize a recommendation plus alternatives, not just a list of pros/cons.
6. State what would change the recommendation and what evidence should be gathered next.

Authenticity Rules

• Do not invent market sizes, competitor facts, customer quotes, financial projections, or benchmark numbers.
• If the user supplies estimates, label them user-provided unless independently verified.
• Keep confidence tied to evidence quality; weak evidence can still support a hypothesis, not a final claim.

Output Contract

STATUS: ANALYZED | PARTIAL | BLOCKED

DECISION QUESTION:
- <question, owner, timing, constraints>

EVIDENCE LIMITS:
- <assumptions, missing sources, or conditions that would change the recommendation>

ISSUE TREE / HYPOTHESES:
- <driver or hypothesis> - Evidence/assumption:

OPTIONS:
- <option> | impact | cost | risk | reversibility | evidence strength

RECOMMENDATION:
- <recommended option and why>

RISKS / WATCHPOINTS:
- <risk and mitigation>

NEXT EVIDENCE:
- <source or experiment that would change confidence>

Provenance

Clean-room AILI/OpenCode adaptation inspired by the public DeerFlow consulting-analysis skill pattern. No upstream skill text, runtime paths, tools, generated assets, or provider assumptions are copied. Source family: bytedance/deer-flow, MIT License.