Claude Business Research Skill: A Reusable Workflow

A Claude business research skill is a saved instruction that tells Claude how to approach company or market research: which questions to ask, which sources to check, and how to present the findings. Running the same instruction every time produces results you can compare across sessions and across researchers.

Tools like fenbs let your team store that reusable instruction and the research links it generates alongside the findings, so the next session builds on what was already confirmed rather than starting over.

What a research skill does

Claude Skills are reusable instructions you can name and recall. A research skill defines the process: what to look for, how to structure the answer, and what to flag when information is missing or uncertain. Without a shared skill, each person runs a slightly different process and the results are harder to compare.

For a broader overview of Claude Skills and how they differ from projects and artifacts, see claude projects vs skills vs artifacts. For other domain-specific skill examples, claude skills examples shows what a finished skill looks like across different use cases.

What to include in a business research instruction

A business research skill needs to tell Claude what to cover, where to look, and how to handle gaps. The following areas cover most company and market research tasks.

• Scope: what the research covers ("company overview", "competitor analysis", "market sizing").
• Output structure: the sections you always want ("Summary", "Key people", "Products or services", "Recent news", "Gaps and uncertainties").
• Source check: a step that asks Claude to note where each factual claim came from and flag anything it could not verify.
• Uncertainty rule: when Claude is not sure, it must say so rather than filling the gap with a plausible-sounding claim.
• Depth limit: how much detail to go into and where to stop ("one paragraph per section unless asked to expand").

Building the instruction step by step

Start with one research task you do frequently: a competitor review, a prospect summary, or a market-entry check. Write the instruction for that task first, test it, then expand.

1. Write the task in one sentence: "Research [company name] and produce a structured summary."
2. Add the output sections you always need and the order you want them in.
3. Add the source-check step: after each factual claim, note the source or mark it as unverified.
4. Add the uncertainty rule: Claude must flag gaps rather than speculate.
5. Test on a company you already know well so you can spot what the skill missed.

After testing, compare the output against your own knowledge of the company. Every gap is a place to add a question to the instruction or a reminder that Claude will not have access to proprietary data.

Adding a source-check step

Business research is only useful when you know which claims are confirmed. Add a source check step that asks Claude to list the sources for its factual claims and flag anything it could not verify against a primary source.

Claude can search the web in supported interfaces. Even so, tell it to prefer the company's own website, official filings, and primary announcements over roundups or summaries. A claim from a press release is more traceable than a claim from a third-party summary.

For market research that involves public data, include the source date alongside each claim in the output instruction. Market share figures and funding numbers have a short shelf life: data from eighteen months ago may no longer reflect the current position. A source date in each finding makes it immediately clear which claims need refreshing before you act on them, and which are recent enough to use as is.

Keep confirmed source links in fenbs under Links and listings for the company or project, so the next research session can build on what was already checked rather than re-checking everything from scratch.

How to do this with fenbs

1. Create a free account and add a project for the research work.
2. Add the research skill instruction to Skills and prompts in fenbs. Name it clearly ("Competitor research", "Prospect summary").
3. As you complete each research run, save confirmed source links under Links and listings in fenbs for the relevant project.
4. Connect your AI app over MCP from Integrations so it can read the current skill instruction and any saved links before it starts a new research session.

When a shared team skill is worth it

A shared skill is worth building when more than one person runs the same type of research and the results need to be comparable. If the process varies a lot between researchers, a shared skill makes the results consistent; it does not remove the need for a person to review the output. Schedule a brief review of the skill after every ten or fifteen research runs to update sections that have become outdated or that consistently need manual correction.

For skills that need to run as part of a larger agent workflow, agent skills covers how research steps fit into multi-step processes. For skills organized around a specific project function, claude skills for project management is a useful reference.