compare

Build a rigorous side-by-side comparison focused on competitive dynamics and investment merit.

Design rationale in .claude/skills/compare/RATIONALE.md (§N.M anchors).

Arguments

$ARGUMENTS = 2+ tickers or company names (e.g., "BESI vs AMAT", "PANW NET CRWD"). Only one ticker provided → identify closest competitors from Sector Note, ask user to confirm before proceeding. Any competitor added by this expansion that has a thesis and will receive a Phase 5 Log append MUST be locked + rename-checked (Step 0.-1.3) before Phase 5 — the initial acquisition only covered the supplied ticker.

Phase 0.-1: Pre-flight

0.-1.1: Acquire per-ticker locks (C4 — §1)

Parse tickers from $ARGUMENTS. Acquire one lock per ticker (.vault-lock.A, .vault-lock.B, .vault-lock.C) per .claude/skills/_shared/preflight.md Procedure 1.3c — per-ticker individual locks, NOT a joint +-delimited lock (§1.1 — breaks on hyphen-containing tickers like BRK-B).

Timeout 10 min. Verify ownership every subsequent Bash block via token match (Procedure 1.5). Release all N locks in final reporting block.

Rollback-on-partial-acquisition (§1.2): if any per-ticker lock is held by another skill, release all previously-acquired locks in this run and abort. Prevents holding a proper subset while concurrent skill holds the rest.

0.-1.2: Rename-marker pre-flight for EACH ticker

For each ticker in $ARGUMENTS, run Procedure 2. ANY .rename_incomplete.TICKER_N → hard-block per contract 2.3. Split-name state on any one ticker would corrupt the cross-thesis comparison research note's wikilinks.

0.-1.3: Lock + rename-check competitors added by single-ticker expansion

If $ARGUMENTS was a single ticker (§Arguments) and the user confirmed a competitor set from the Sector Note, the initial 0.-1.1/0.-1.2 covered ONLY the supplied ticker. Before Phase 5, for every confirmed competitor that has a thesis (web-only competitors get no vault writes, so no lock): acquire its .vault-lock.TICKER (Procedure 1.3c, appended to the run's lock set — same token) and run Procedure 2. Partial-acquisition rollback (§0.-1.1) applies to the expanded set. Skipping this lets Phase 5.2 append to a thesis Log with no lock held and no rename-marker guard.

Phase 0: Thesis Existence Check

Verify which tickers have existing thesis notes in Theses/.

All tickers have theses → proceed to Phase 1 (full comparison mode).

Some tickers lack theses → report and offer options (§2.2):

⚠️ No thesis found for [TICKER(S)]. Options:
  (a) Proceed — use web research for [TICKER(S)] (lighter comparison, no vault updates for missing tickers)
  (b) Stop — run /thesis [TICKER] first for a full-depth comparison

Wait for user selection.

• (a) Web-supplemented mode: proceed. Missing tickers use web research in Phase 1. Phase 5 vault updates apply ONLY to tickers with existing theses. Report appends: 💡 Consider /thesis [TICKER] to formalize coverage.
• (b) Stop: report missing tickers, stop.

No tickers have theses → stop (§2.1). At least one thesis is required as analytical anchor.

Phase 1: Gather Context

Two-round parallel-batch pattern. For N tickers the research-note wikilinks can only be enumerated after the thesis is read, so the thesis reads fire first (Round 1), then all downstream reads fire in one parallel batch (Round 2).

Round 1 — parallel batch (single message)

Issue ALL of these in ONE message:

• Read each thesis note — one Read per ticker with a thesis. Do NOT loop serially; send all N Reads in one tool-call batch.
• Grep once across Research/ Macro & Technology/ for any of the tickers with glob='*.md' (use an alternation pattern TICKER1|TICKER2|TICKER3, scoped to markdown). One multi-ticker Grep replaces N per-ticker Greps.

Wait for Round 1 to land. Enumerate, per ticker: Related Research wikilinks, sector note paths (from sector: frontmatter), referenced Macro notes.

Mental Models reading gate (MANDATORY — CLAUDE.md; _shared/mental-models-section.md). Include in the Round 2 batch: [[Mental Models/Generalist - Overview]] (always) + the [[Mental Models/Industry - X]] for the compared tickers' sector(s) + any [[Mental Models/Lens - X]] in play (Value Layer Monopoly is especially load-bearing for competitive comparison — which player owns the layer everything else must traverse). Apply the READING PROTOCOL: the comparison verdict is a hypothesis; run the base-rate adversarially; where the models rank the same winner the bull consensus already sees, hunt the datapoint that would flip it. Read each ticker's own ## Mental Models section to compare their recorded triggers head-to-head.

Round 2 — parallel batch (single message, may be large)

Issue ALL of these in ONE message:

• Read every research note linked from every thesis (union across N tickers — deduped).
• Read every distinct Sector Note (N tickers may share sectors — read each sector note once).
• Read any Macro notes referenced by any of the theses.
• Read [[Mental Models/Generalist - Overview]] + the in-scope Industry/Lens files (reading gate above).

Scaling note: /compare A vs B issues ~10-20 Reads in Round 2. /compare A vs B vs C issues ~15-30. All land in one round-trip. Do not serialize per-ticker.

Web-supplemented tickers (Phase 0 option a): skip Rounds 1-2 for that ticker. Issue web search for business model overview, latest financials (revenue, margins, growth), competitive position, key products in parallel with Round 2's vault reads (different tool surfaces — WebSearch and Read parallelize freely). Search vault (Research/, Sectors/, Macro & Technology/) for existing mentions. Flag sections without vault-depth data with [web only].

Phase 1.5: Graph-primer shared adjacency

Per .claude/skills/_shared/graph-primer.md Mode B.

Read _graph.md once. Fire the Read in parallel with Round 2 reads above (same tool-call batch — different tool surface from the thesis/sector/research Reads, parallelizes freely). Parse adjacency_index and clusters.

For targets A, B (and C, D, … if 3+ tickers):

• entry_a = adjacency_index[A], entry_b = adjacency_index[B], …
• shared_sectors = entry_a.sectors ∩ entry_b.sectors
• shared_macros = entry_a.macros ∩ entry_b.macros
• shared_research = entry_a.research ∩ entry_b.research
• cross_thesis_link = (B ∈ entry_a.cross-thesis, A ∈ entry_b.cross-thesis) — surface as both, A→B, B→A, or none
• cluster_co_member = ∃ c ∈ clusters where {A, B} ⊆ c.members

N>2 tickers: compute pairwise for all pairs. Surface common_sectors = intersection across all entries and common_macros = intersection across all entries for the aggregate view; individual pairs retain their shared sets.

Inject as primer context for Phase 2 + Phase 3:

Shared adjacency baseline (graph primer):
  Shared sectors:       [list]
  Shared macros:        [list]
  Shared research:      [list]
  Cross-thesis link:    [both | A→B | B→A | none]
  Cluster co-membership: [cluster name or "none"]

Phase 2 framing: "Shared adjacency establishes the comparison baseline. Differences below are sharper against this baseline — a divergence despite shared sector is structurally more interesting than a divergence between unrelated names."

Orientation not filter (contract §Anti-patterns): cluster co-membership does NOT imply substitutability. Ticker-specific content reads from Phase 1 remain primary.

Missing-graph fallback: per .claude/skills/_shared/graph-primer.md §Missing-graph fallback. Phase 2 proceeds without shared-adjacency context; comparison quality matches pre-retrofit behavior.

Phase 1.75: Same-quarter framing pulls (Quartr — 2026-09-09)

Both theses were probably written by the same analyst; the freshest independent input is what each management said in the SAME reporting season. Per _shared/quartr.md (§1 loading, §3 resolution via the shared ID cache): for EACH compared ticker, list_events {companyId, expand: ["transcript"]} → latest reported earnings event → get_event_summary (one summary per ticker — cheap, ~1.5K tokens; never full transcripts in this phase). From the aligned summaries build a management-framing row set consumed by Phase 2 (Competitive Position) and Phase 3 (dynamic analysis):

• What each management LED with (the pitch), what each hedged, what each did not mention that the other emphasised — the asymmetry between two same-quarter pitches is a live competitive-dynamics datapoint (who is on offence, who is explaining)
• Guidance construction side-by-side (range vs point, raised vs reaffirmed), named customers/technologies claimed by both (contested territory), and any direct or oblique reference to the other company
• Cite the event URLs; summaries are pointers per the contract — a figure that becomes load-bearing in the verdict gets verified via /transcript or the filing before the note is written

Fiscal-calendar misalignment (e.g. a January-FY name vs a December-FY name) → use each company's most recent report and state the date gap in the row set. Quartr unavailable / a ticker unresolved → emit ⚠️ framing pulls skipped for [TICKER] and proceed; this phase is an accelerant, not a gate, and does not count toward Phase 3.5's external-evidence mandate (same-quarter framing is management's own voice, not third-party evidence).

Phase 2: Structural Comparison

Business Model Comparison

Dimension	[TICKER A]	[TICKER B]	Edge
Core revenue model
Gross margin structure
Customer concentration
Recurring vs one-time revenue
Geographic mix
Capital intensity
R&D as % of revenue

Competitive Position

Factor	[TICKER A]	[TICKER B]	Edge
Market share (current)
Market share trend (direction)
Pricing power trajectory
Technology moat depth
Switching costs
Scale / network advantages
Management quality / track record
Insider alignment

Financial Comparison

Metric	[TICKER A]	[TICKER B]	Notes
Market Cap
EV/Revenue
Revenue Growth (latest)
Revenue CAGR (3yr)
Gross Margin
Operating Margin
FCF Yield
Net Cash / Net Debt

Use data from vault Key Metrics tables, supplement with web where gaps exist.

Metrics-freshness check. Read each compared thesis's key_metrics_last_refreshed frontmatter. Annotate each ticker column with its as-of date ([TICKER A] (as of YYYY-MM-DD)). Flag when the tickers' metrics are not comparably fresh — any two differ by >45 days OR any is >90d old:

⚠️ comparing metrics of different vintages — [TICKER_A] as of [date] vs [TICKER_B] as of [date]; run /numbers to align before trusting the financial comparison

A side-by-side of stale-vs-fresh numbers silently misleads the verdict.

Phase 3: Dynamic Analysis (§8 — where insight lives)

Go beyond static snapshots:

1. Market share trajectory — where is share shifting and why? Use vault research notes for evidence. Structural or cyclical?
2. Pricing power divergence — whose pricing power is strengthening vs weakening? What drives divergence (technology, regulation, lock-in, commoditisation)?
3. Technology trajectory — who is on the right side of the next platform shift? Who is investing in the right areas? Who risks disruption?
4. Logical tension — what does each company need to be true that the other's success disproves? (If BESI wins on hybrid bonding, does that mean AMAT's approach fails, or can both win?)
5. Scenario divergence — under what macro or industry scenario does the current underdog win? How likely per vault macro notes?
6. Customer and supplier overlap — do they share customers? Who has more pricing power in that relationship? Shared suppliers (correlated supply risk)?

Phase 3.5: External-evidence check (parallel batch — MANDATORY-unless-waived when any compared ticker is high conviction)

The verdict turns on the decisive axis surfaced in Phase 3 (market-share trajectory, pricing-power divergence, the platform-shift call). An internal-only verdict draws that axis from the same vault notes that built both theses — recent analyst actions, PT changes, and third-party market-share reads are the external check the vault does not carry. If any WebSearch / WebFetch calls are issued, batch them in parallel — one message, up to 25 invocations, mirroring /stress-test Phase 2.5 and /thesis Step 3. Do NOT serialize independent external lookups.

Conviction-gated requirement (2026-07-14):

• Any compared ticker is conviction: high → this phase is mandatory. Issue at least one parallel batch on the comparison's decisive axis: recent analyst downgrades / PT changes on each name, competitive / market-share datapoints, and a fresh third-party take (≤90 days) on which name is winning. The Phase 4 verdict MUST cite ≥1 datapoint the vault did not author. Rationale: both theses were likely written by the same analyst applying the same mental models, so the verdict inherits that shared prior — the winner the vault already favours — unless an outside datapoint breaks the tie (READING PROTOCOL: agreement across models is a disconfirm trigger, not a confirmation). The user may waive ONLY with an explicit "vault-only" instruction.
• All compared theses conviction: medium | low or status: draft → external evidence is optional; skip freely when the vault already carries sufficient competitive evidence. Its absence must then be stated in the Phase 4 verdict (external evidence: none — vault-only comparison).

Phase 4: Investment Verdict

• Risk-adjusted asymmetry: not "which is cheaper" but which offers better upside/downside skew given the evidence
• Consensus tag: tag the stated preference [consensus] or [non-consensus] — is the preferred name already the Street's pick (little edge; the market prices it) or a genuine variant view? When [non-consensus], name the contrasting consensus in one clause (e.g., "Street prefers AMAT on scale; this backs BESI on hybrid-bonding share gain"). A [consensus] verdict adds no edge even when correct.
• Portfolio role: substitutes or complements? Can you own both, or one-or-the-other? Does owning both create hidden concentration?
• Preference trigger: specific, observable event that would flip preference. Make it falsifiable.
• Conviction gap: if one has a thesis and the other doesn't, should it? If both have theses, is the conviction spread justified by the evidence?

Phase 5: Output

5.0: Write manifest skeleton (M2 — skeleton before destructive edits)

Generate HHMMSS once for the entire Phase 5 run. All downstream per-file writes (research note, sector snapshots, manifest) reuse it.

HHMMSS=$(date +%H%M%S)
mkdir -p _Archive/Snapshots

Before any destructive mutation (5.1 research-note write, 5.2 Log appends, 5.5b sector edits), write a manifest skeleton at _Archive/Snapshots/_compare-manifest (compare-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS).md with status: in-progress (§3 invariant: skeleton → populate → flip):

---
type: compare-manifest
batch: compare-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS
status: in-progress
date: YYYY-MM-DD
---

# Compare Batch Manifest

> **If `status: in-progress`**, `/compare` crashed between Phase 5.0 (skeleton)
> and Phase 5.5c (flip). Check the vault for partial state:
>   - Research note at `Research/YYYY-MM-DD - [tickers] - Competitive Comparison.md` may or may not exist.
>   - Thesis Logs may have partial appends (filter by today's date + comparison wikilink).
>   - Sector notes may have been edited (Phase 5.5b rolls back on failure, but crash mid-5.5b leaves partial edits).
> Recovery: `/rollback compare-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS` → cascade through each affected sector snapshot in Phase 5.5a.
>
> **If `status: completed`**, Phase 5 finished with all sector writes succeeding atomically.
> **If `status: rolled-back`**, Phase 5.5b atomicity fired — sectors restored from 5.5a snapshots; research note and thesis Logs preserved.

## Tickers compared
- *(filled in Phase 5.5c flip)*

## Sector writes attempted
- *(filled in Phase 5.5c flip with per-sector outcomes)*

## Sector writes rolled back (if any)
- *(filled in Phase 5.5c flip — empty if status: completed)*

## Thesis Log appends
- *(filled in Phase 5.5c flip with per-ticker outcomes)*

## Research note
- *(filled in Phase 5.5c flip with path and propagated_to status)*

Skeleton write failure → hard abort Phase 5 before any destructive edit. Locks remain held until the final reporting block; report to user and release.

5.1: Write comparison research note (without propagated_to: — §3.1)

Save to Research/YYYY-MM-DD - [TICKER A] vs [TICKER B] - Competitive Comparison.md:

---
date: YYYY-MM-DD
tags: [research, comparison, SECTOR, TICKER_A, TICKER_B]
sector: [shared sector]
source: vault synthesis
source_type: comparison
# propagated_to: omitted intentionally — set in Phase 5.4 only after every Log append succeeds
---

Omitted at write time: mirrors /scenario Phase 6.1 + 6.3 atomicity (§3). If any Phase 5.2 Log append fails, pre-writing propagated_to: would falsely claim every ticker received its Log entry → permanent audit gap.

5.2: Per-thesis Log append (track per-ticker outcomes)

Vault updates — ONLY for tickers with existing thesis notes. Skip web-supplemented tickers (§2.3).

For each thesis with existing note, attempt Log append (max 2 lines). Prefix "Comparison " (trailing space significant — registry §16 in _shared/log-prefixes.md) marks this as skill-origin for /sync Step 2.5 and pairs with the sector-side idempotency markers in Phase 5.5 to prevent /sync Step 4 from silently overwriting the sector analytical edits this skill just applied:

### YYYY-MM-DD
- Comparison [[Research/YYYY-MM-DD - A vs B - Competitive Comparison]]: [key competitive insight] — conviction [unchanged/strengthened/weakened + reason]

Track per-ticker outcomes: succeeded: [tickers] and failed: [tickers, reason]. Failure = Log append Edit failed (file locked, missing ## Log, malformed frontmatter). Do NOT abort loop on single failure.

5.3: Add to Related Research (independent of Log outcome — §3.3)

For each compared thesis with existing note, add comparison to ## Related Research (if not already present):

- [[Research/YYYY-MM-DD - A vs B - Competitive Comparison]]

Wikilink registration, not propagation claim — runs regardless of 5.2 outcome.

5.4: Atomicity rule for propagated_to: (§3.2)

Update research note's propagated_to: only after EVERY thesis-with-existing-note Log append has landed.

• All succeeded (failed: empty): edit frontmatter to add propagated_to: [TICKER1, TICKER2, ...] (all tickers with existing theses). Insertion: immediately before closing ---. /sync Case 2b skips as already-propagated.
• One or more failed (failed: non-empty): do NOT write propagated_to: at all. Next /sync detects each via file-direct fallback (research note tags: + body wikilinks list each ticker), per-thesis idempotency check re-attempts failed; succeeded targets skipped via per-thesis idempotency.

Per-failure reporting: list every failed ticker in Phase 6 report under Per-thesis Log appends — failed: [TICKER1 (reason), TICKER2 (reason)].

5.5: Cross-sector atomic sector-note updates (6.5 — §4)

Cross-sector ALL-OR-NOTHING semantics. Any sector note's edit failure mid-transaction → roll back all preceding successful sector edits using per-sector snapshots.

Resolve target sector set: for each compared thesis with existing note, resolve sector via .claude/skills/_shared/sector-resolution.md. Dedup. Yields target_sectors: [(thesis_list, sector_note_path, match_confidence), ...].

Confidence handling per resolved sector (§4.3):

• match_confidence: none: emit no-match warning. Remove sector from atomic transaction set. Comparison still completes for resolved sectors.
• match_confidence: substring: emit log_message AND pause for explicit user confirmation before modifying analytical text. Declined → remove from transaction set.
• match_confidence: normalized | exact: proceed silently (normalized logs in final report, no prompt).

5.5a: Pre-snapshot ALL target sectors FIRST (§4.2)

Before any sector note write, snapshot every target sector. Any snapshot fails → abort immediately (no destructive modifications yet).

Issue all cp calls in ONE Bash block using background shell jobs + wait — for a 3+ sector span, this is one Bash round-trip instead of 3+ sequential Bash calls:

mkdir -p _Archive/Snapshots
HHMMSS=$(date +%H%M%S)
# For each (thesis_list, sector_note_path, _) in target_sectors, fire cp in background:
pids=()
cp "Sectors/Sector A.md" "_Archive/Snapshots/Sector A (pre-compare YYYY-MM-DD-$HHMMSS).md" & pids+=($!)
cp "Sectors/Sector B.md" "_Archive/Snapshots/Sector B (pre-compare YYYY-MM-DD-$HHMMSS).md" & pids+=($!)
cp "Sectors/Sector C.md" "_Archive/Snapshots/Sector C (pre-compare YYYY-MM-DD-$HHMMSS).md" & pids+=($!)
# Wait per-PID: bare `wait` returns 0 even if a background cp failed, so the
# "any snapshot fails → abort" rule (§4.2) could never detect the failure and
# 5.5b destructive edits would proceed with no rollback anchor.
snap_fail=0
for pid in "${pids[@]}"; do wait "$pid" || snap_fail=1; done
[ "$snap_fail" -ne 0 ] && { echo "❌ sector snapshot failed — aborting before any sector edit"; exit 1; }

Then issue all frontmatter-addition Edits as a single parallel tool-call batch (one Edit per snapshot, all in the same message).

Add frontmatter to each snapshot with per-sector batch ID (§5.1 — distinct per sector). The -[sector-slug] goes at the END so the manifest batch compare-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS (§5.0) is a PREFIX of every sector snapshot batch — otherwise /rollback compare-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS (2.5a prefix lookup) matches zero sector snapshots and the cascade silently restores nothing:

snapshot_of: "[[Sectors/Sector Name]]"
snapshot_date: YYYY-MM-DD
snapshot_trigger: compare
snapshot_batch: compare-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS-[sector-slug]

Store snapshot_map: {sector_note_path → snapshot_path} for potential rollback in 5.5b.

5.5b: Apply sector edits; on failure, roll back all prior successes (§4.2)

attempted_and_succeeded: []
attempted_and_failed: []

for sector_note_path, thesis_list, confidence in target_sectors:
    try:
        apply_sector_edit(sector_note_path, thesis_list, comparison_insight)
        attempted_and_succeeded.append(sector_note_path)
    except EditFailure as e:
        # Roll back ALL prior succeeded sector edits
        for prior_sector in attempted_and_succeeded:
            copy_from(snapshot_map[prior_sector], prior_sector)  # restore from snapshot
        
        attempted_and_failed.append((sector_note_path, str(e)))
        abort_transaction(
            reason=f"Sector note write failed: {sector_note_path} ({e}). "
                   f"Rolled back: {attempted_and_succeeded}. "
                   f"Research note and thesis Logs preserved. "
                   f"Re-run /compare after resolving the sector write issue.")

apply_sector_edit: targeted Edit operations on sector note. Covers FOUR edit surfaces in a fixed order — each atomic, single Edit failure triggers outer abort + rollback:

1. Competitive dynamics — revise relative-positioning prose where A vs B comparison changes the sector narrative.
2. Value chain / comparison tables — update tables that list A and B side-by-side.
3. ## Related Research — append research-note wikilink (idempotency marker, §4.5 — pairs with /sync Step 4.0 sub-step 1):

   - [[Research/YYYY-MM-DD - A vs B - Competitive Comparison]]
   

   Skip if already present (idempotent on repair re-runs).
4. ## Log — append dated entry referencing the research note (idempotency marker, §4.5 — pairs with /sync Step 4.0 sub-step 2):

   ### YYYY-MM-DD
   - Comparison [[Research/YYYY-MM-DD - A vs B - Competitive Comparison]]: [one-line sector-level takeaway — e.g., "competitive dynamics revised: A's moat widens vs B"]
   

   Same Comparison prefix as thesis Log entries (registry §16). If sector note has no ## Log section, graceful-skip this sub-step per _shared/preflight.md Procedure 4 and log ℹ️ Sector [name] has no ## Log — Related Research wikilink alone serves as idempotency marker.

Why sub-steps 3 and 4 are load-bearing (§4.5 — C1 fix): without them, /sync Step 4.0 idempotency check fails to detect that /compare already propagated the research note to this sector. /sync Step 4a/4b then re-edits the same competitive-dynamics / value-chain sections from scratch, silently overwriting /compare's nuanced analysis.

How the two sub-steps combine with /sync Step 4.0:

• Sub-step 3 (## Related Research wikilink) satisfies Step 4.0 sub-step 1 — without a wikilink match there, Step 4.0 classifies as "first-time propagation" and proceeds straight to 4a/4b (full re-edit). Sub-step 3 is therefore the minimum required marker: it stops "first-time" misclassification.
• Sub-step 4 (today-dated sector ## Log entry) additionally satisfies Step 4.0 sub-step 2 — wikilink present alone only advances Step 4.0 to its Log-entry probe; it does NOT by itself fire the skip. With both markers present, Step 4.0 returns skip 4a + 4b cleanly.
• Sector without ## Log (sub-step 4 graceful-skips): Step 4.0 sub-step 2 reads the absent Log, finds no today-dated entry, and falls through to its "proceed normally" branch (which then relies on Step 4b's deep-analysis to decide whether any real delta exists). This is strictly weaker than the two-marker case — Step 4b may still issue redundant edits, though its deep-analysis is designed to gate on genuine delta. Treat the sector-without-Log case as a known soft spot and ensure sub-step 3 at minimum lands.

abort_transaction surfaces (§4.4):

• Sectors successfully edited (now rolled back to pre-compare state): list
• Sector that failed: path + reason
• Research note status: preserved (5.1 already wrote it)
• Thesis Logs status: preserved (5.2 already wrote them)
• propagated_to: status: depends on 5.4 — set (if all 5.2 succeeded) or omitted (atomicity fired)

5.5c: Populate + flip compare manifest (M2 — skeleton → populate → flip)

Manifest skeleton was written at Phase 5.0 with status: in-progress. Phase 5.5c populates the body placeholders with actual outcomes from 5.1-5.5b and flips status.

Populate body (Edit the Phase 5.0 skeleton, replacing *(filled in Phase 5.5c flip)* placeholders):

## Tickers compared
- TICKER_A, TICKER_B, TICKER_C

## Sector writes attempted
- Sectors/X.md — succeeded (snapshot: [[_Archive/Snapshots/X (pre-compare ...)]])
- Sectors/Y.md — succeeded (snapshot: [[_Archive/Snapshots/Y (pre-compare ...)]])

## Sector writes rolled back (if any)
- (none if status: completed)

## Thesis Log appends
- TICKER_A: succeeded
- TICKER_B: succeeded
- TICKER_C: failed (reason) — will be retried by next /sync via file-direct fallback

## Research note
- [[Research/YYYY-MM-DD - TICKER_A vs TICKER_B vs TICKER_C - Competitive Comparison]]
- propagated_to: set | omitted (atomicity — Log append failed for at least one ticker)

Flip frontmatter:

• All sector writes succeeded: status: in-progress → status: completed. Add completed_date: YYYY-MM-DD.
• Phase 5.5b rollback fired: status: in-progress → status: rolled-back. Add completed_date: YYYY-MM-DD.

Verify flip landed (Edit-return inspection — no re-read): inspect the frontmatter-flip Edit's return value. The Edit tool reports success iff the replacement landed; the returned snippet shows the post-edit frontmatter. Confirm status: is no longer in-progress from the Edit-return content. On verification failure: report ⚠️ Compare manifest status flip failed — manifest remains status: in-progress despite completion. /lint #45 will flag this as Critical. Manual fix: edit manifest frontmatter to the correct terminal status. This is the FINAL step — sector edits (5.5) already ran; proceed only to the _hot.md update and the Phase 6 report.

status: rolled-back indicates clean abort (Phase 5.5b rollback fired). status: completed indicates atomic success. status: in-progress surfaced as Critical by /lint #45 (§6.2).

Sector edits — targeted Edit operations

Modify original sector notes using targeted Edit (atomic string replacement per section), NOT full-file Write. Each Edit call succeeds atomically or leaves the section unchanged — blast radius of mid-edit failure is zero. Apply one Edit per modified section (e.g., one for competitive dynamics, one for value chain).

Post-edit verification (Edit-return inspection — no re-read): inspect each sector-note Edit's return value. Per edited section, verify from the Edit-return content:

• Ends with complete sentence (no mid-word, mid-sentence, unclosed formatting)
• No incomplete table rows (line starts | but doesn't end |)

Any fail: ⚠️ Sector note may contain a partial edit in [section]. Snapshot available: [[_Archive/Snapshots/...]]. Review manually or /rollback.

Graph update deferred

_graph.md owned exclusively by /graph. Run /graph last after this skill to register comparison research note and new cross-thesis connections.

_hot.md update

Per .claude/skills/_shared/hot-md-contract.md (do NOT touch Latest Sync / Sync Archive):

1. Active Research Thread: same-ticker continuation per contract. Write: compared [TICKER A] vs [TICKER B], key competitive insight, logical next research step.
2. Recent Conviction Changes: add entry per ticker where conviction was strengthened or weakened.
3. Open Questions: add unresolved competitive questions comparison surfaced.

Word cap: after edits, over 8,000 (soft cap per _shared/hot-md-contract.md) → prune ## Sync Archive (oldest first) then *Previous:* lines. Abort if over 10,000 hard cap.

Phase 6: Report

1. Single most important competitive insight and whether it changes conviction on either name — lead with the decisive-axis divergence and the Phase 4 verdict ([consensus]/[non-consensus]), not the research-note link.
2. Comparison research note: [[Research/YYYY-MM-DD - A vs B - Competitive Comparison]]
3. Per-thesis Log appends (5.2 outcome):
   • Theses with existing notes propagated: [N] of [M] (succeeded list)
   • propagated_to: frontmatter — set ([TICKER1, TICKER2, ...]) (all succeeded) | omitted (one or more appends failed — next /sync will retry)
   • Failed appends (if any): [TICKER1 (reason), TICKER2 (reason)]
4. Web-supplemented tickers (if any from Phase 0 option a): [TICKER1, TICKER2] — used web research, no vault updates. Consider /thesis [TICKER] to formalize coverage.
5. Sector notes updated: per-sector list with snapshot path, or "no snapshot (link addition only)".
6. Transaction state: completed | rolled-back: [sectors rolled back, reason]
7. Follow-up: → Run /sync to propagate sector note changes and retry failed Log appends. Then /graph last.