Build a timeline of a competitor's product releases

A draft release timeline separating announcement, preview and general availability with dated evidence.

Choose one of three approaches. The steps for that option appear below.

Choose an option above. On a phone, swipe the tabs left or right to see all options →

Claude: extracts the ledger and drafts the timeline

You upload the evidence, Claude extracts the ledger and drafts the timeline, the research lead checks every line.

  1. You

    Collect and upload evidence

  2. Claude

    Extract the evidence ledger

  3. You

    Check the ledger closely

  4. Claude

    Draft the timeline

  5. The research lead

    Lead approves or holds

  1. Collect and upload the evidence set

    Use: You

    Have ready: release notes, documentation snapshots and announcements, inside permitted-use limits. Build a source inventory and upload all to one Claude chat.

    Check

    Check every in-scope source is uploaded and readable, and scope, source access and permission limits hold; flag missing inputs.

  2. Extract the dated evidence ledger

    Use: Claude

    Ask Claude to extract every dated release event into a ledger with source IDs, dates, exact passages, locations and availability wording.

    Details

    What to paste into the tool

    Task: Draft evidence ledger with exact quoted passages and locations. Read each uploaded document. For every product release event, add one ledger row: source_id, source_date as printed, exact quoted passage, page or section location, the availability wording used (announcement, preview or general availability), evidence_status, permission_note, unresolved_question. Do not fill gaps from memory; leave the field unresolved.

  3. Check the ledger line by line

    Use: You

    Compare the ledger against the original documents; correct entries, list unresolved questions, and ask Claude for fixes in the same chat.

    Check

    Compare extracted passages, dates, identifiers and numeric fields against the originals before the ledger moves on. Check scope, source access and permission limits. Checked ledger with source_id, source_date when known, passage_or_cell_location, extracted_value_or_quote, evidence_status, permission_note and unresolved_question fields (original units and time zones retained).

  4. Draft the timeline from the ledger

    Use: Claude

    Ask Claude to order events by date, label each announcement, preview or general availability, flag conflicts and draft the timeline with uncertainty notes.

    Details

    What to paste into the tool

    Task: Draft release timeline separating announcement, preview and general availability; Source-linked uncertainty and exception notes. Using only the checked ledger, order all events by date. Label each event announcement, preview or general availability strictly from its quoted passage. Flag every conflict between documentation and announcements. Draft the release timeline and attach a source-linked uncertainty and exception note to each uncertain row.

  5. Check every event and decide

    Use: The research lead

    Check every event has dated evidence, an explicit availability state and shipped-versus-announced status; keep unresolved items. Approve or hold.

Before you paste into any AI tool, remove any confidential information. Put it back at the end.

Tools in this workflow

Final check

Research analyst compares extracted passages, dates, identifiers and numeric fields against the originals before the ledger is used (step h2 check; h1 in option B).

Market research lead checks shipped-versus-announced status and confirms the check before the timeline is treated as complete (step h3 check).

Google warns that Gemini Notebook can make mistakes and do unexpected things; double check it.

Check the result against your original inputs. Approve it before sharing or acting.

What still needs checking
  • Whether the full evidence set fits the upload or source limits of the chosen tool must be checked against the actual corpus size.
  • Plan-tier availability for each option must be confirmed on the vendor site at execution time.
  • Perplexity help pages (how-does-perplexity-work and file-uploads) returned HTTP 500 on 2026-10-28 on repeated fetch, so no Perplexity capability, limit or plan claim is evidenced; all Perplexity verdicts are not yet checked.
  • Evidence pages were re-read on 2026-10-28 and quotes checked as contiguous verbatim text; requirement-level verdicts and workflow wording have had an author pass only. Independent raw review of all options completed; revisions made after it are pending re-review.

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