Proactive competitive/existing-solution discovery skill or plugin

[krisrowe]

Problem

Repeatedly discovering well-funded, mature solutions to problems after investing significant time building alternatives. This isn't a knowledge gap — it's a discovery workflow gap. The developer tooling space moves too fast for manual awareness.

Proposed solution

A skill, plugin, or hook-based system that proactively surfaces competitive/existing solutions when the agent detects the user is building something that may already exist. This should happen early — before significant investment — not after.

How it might work

1. Hook-triggered: When the user starts a new project, creates a new repo, or describes a problem to solve, the agent automatically searches for existing well-adopted solutions before diving into implementation.
2. MCP-backed: Tools that query npm downloads, GitHub stars, trending repos, and known ecosystems for overlap with what the user is building.
3. Integrated with identify-best-practices: Could be an extension of that skill — the "map to established thinking" step already does this, but it requires explicit invocation. This would make it proactive.

Prior art to research

• Is there an existing skill or tool that does competitive landscape scanning for developer projects?
• How do teams at companies handle "build vs buy" decisions systematically?
• What automated tools exist for dependency/ecosystem discovery?