Build a competitive claim ledger with one sourced claim per row

Why the unit is one claim

A closed tab leaves only what you remember, and that memory can lose scope. For example, "$49 per user per month on annual billing" can become "they charge per seat." A remembered claim has no URL or date attached, so Sales cannot verify it from the note alone.

A row holds one assertion small enough to be true or false, and the page that supports it. "Acme is expensive" is a judgement built from several rows; it belongs in a positioning note with the row numbers under it.

Decide which competitors and dimensions you track before you fill anything in; the competitive research plan lesson covers that choice.

What goes in a row

Start with these eight columns. Removing one drops information this method uses for review; add another only when your process needs it.

The five statuses have fixed meanings. Verified: you opened the source and it says what the claim says. Unverified: no source you could open, or one that does not quite say it; these rows never reach sales. Internal: from your own material, such as a lost-deal note, and not checked externally; usable with the label attached. Conflicting: another row disagrees, and both stay until someone resolves them. Retired: a review found the source gone or changed; the row stays, with its dates, to reduce the risk of someone re-adding the claim from memory.

A worked example

The rows below are made-up practice entries about a fictional "Acme", with placeholder URLs and invented prices.

Read the last row with the first. The review says $59 and the pricing page says $49 today. Both rows stay, both marked conflicting, until you learn whether the price changed or the reviewer was on a different plan. Averaging them into one row hides the disagreement.

The third row is an inference. The plan table says SSO is included in Enterprise; it never says Starter lacks it. The row stays unverified until a page states it, or a sales engineer confirms it on a call and the row becomes internal.

Three rules that keep it honest

No source, no row. A claim with nothing you can open goes in as unverified or does not go in. That covers a screenshot with no URL, a rep's recollection and an AI answer without a link. When you find the page, the row gets a source and a status.

Conflicts get two rows. Keep both, mark both, and note which is newer and closer to the vendor. Picking the one that suits your story is how a battlecard ends up wrong in a way nobody can trace. The conflicting research lesson covers resolving it.

Stale rows are retired, with their dates. A fact that was true in March and gone in September shows as retired, with both dates. Keeping the row preserves the reason it was retired and reduces the risk that someone re-adds it from memory.

Before a row is quoted to sales, check it against this list:

• The claim is one assertion, with its number, unit and billing period where they apply.
• The source is a URL that was opened on the date checked, and the supporting sentence is on that page.
• The status is verified. Internal rows travel only with their label; unverified rows do not travel.
• An owner and a review date are filled in.
• Any row that disagrees with this one is marked conflicting, and so is this one.

Checking a claim with Claude

With web search enabled on a supported model, Claude's web-search responses include citations. Anthropic's web search help page, checked September 16, 2026, says Free accounts can use search within their usage limits, while Team and Enterprise require owner enablement. That makes web search a fast way to find the page behind a claim. The citation is still a link to open, and opening it is your job.

Work inside the Claude Project you use for this competitor, with the ledger file in its knowledge, so Claude can see which rows already exist.

1. Give Claude one claim at a time

   Ask about a single row, such as whether Acme's Starter plan costs $49 per user per month. A broad request to research Acme returns a summary with mixed sources, and you cannot tell which link supports which sentence. Check: the reply is about one claim and names the page it used.

2. Ask for the exact sentence and the link

   Have Claude quote the passage it relied on, with the URL. If it cannot quote one, the claim goes in as unverified. Check: the quoted passage contains the number, unit and period your claim states.

3. Open the link yourself

   Read the passage on the page. This step catches a quote paraphrased into something the page never said. Check: the sentence on the page matches the quote, and the page is the vendor's own or an independent source you would cite by name.

4. Write the row by hand

   Paste the claim, URL, date and status into the ledger yourself. A row Claude wrote from a source you did not open is an unverified row with a verified label. Check: every new row carries today's date.

Wording that works for the second step:

Check one claim: "[the claim exactly as written in the ledger]".
Search the web. Quote the exact sentence that supports or contradicts it, with the page URL and, if shown, the page's date.
If no page states it, say so. Do not infer it from a related page.

On the Free plan, searches count against the rolling usage limit described on the same help page, so a long checking session may pause partway. Anthropic's Citations feature for developers is a separate, API-only capability, unrelated to the links you see in chat.

For claims that came out of an AI research session, the lesson on verifying AI research covers the extra checks.

Set review dates by how fast the fact moves

This is an illustrative starting schedule, not a measured validity window. Adjust it to the change rate and risk you observe:

• Fast. Pricing, plan limits, promotional bundles, headcount. Review monthly, or as soon as a rep reports a change.
• Medium. Integrations, security attestations, named customers, feature availability. Review quarterly.
• Static. Founding year, headquarters, funding history. Review when you notice a change, and at least once a year.

On the review date, open the source again. If it still says the same thing, update the date checked and set the next review. If it has changed, add a new row with the new claim and retire the old one. If the page is gone, retire the row and note that. Never edit a verified row's claim in place; the old row is the history.

Every battlecard sentence should trace to a verified row. Keep the row references beside each line of the card, so a rep asking whether something is still true gets a lookup. The battlecards lesson covers the card itself.

Where the spreadsheet stops

The ledger works while its owner can reopen every source on the review schedule. It starts to fail when source checks are repeatedly skipped, and a spreadsheet cannot tell you that happened.

Steve shows each battlecard claim with its status (Confirmed, Needs verification or Unverified) and the sources behind it. Look at Steve for competitive intelligence when source checks are repeatedly missed. Keep your own ledger when you need a row-by-row record you control.