super-search-business/docs/super-search-business-spec.md

# Super Search for Business — Product Specification

> **Status:** Draft v1.0 · July 25, 2026
> **Author:** Sho'Nuff (Hermes Agent) for Germaine Brown / IT Pro Partner

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## 1. Product Overview

Super Search for Business is a multi-tenant competitive intelligence and OSINT search platform sold as a SaaS subscription. Companies subscribe to gain continuous visibility into their competitive landscape: who their competitors are, what customers say about them, what the market is looking for, and actionable intelligence from public records.

**What it is:** A business search engine that does the work of a competitive intelligence analyst — for $199-1,499/mo instead of $5k+/mo.

**What it isn't:** SEO keyword research (Semrush), web traffic estimation (SimilarWeb), or a generic search tool. This is investigative business intelligence.

### Core value proposition

> "Know everything the public internet knows about your competitors, your reputation, and your market — continuously, automatically, and without hiring an analyst."

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## 2. Target Market

### Primary
- SMB service businesses (legal, medical, trades, agencies) who can't afford a dedicated analyst
- Small consulting firms doing competitive research for clients
- Debt recovery / skip tracing firms (existing DRE workflow)

### Secondary
- Mid-market companies wanting continuous market monitoring
- Franchise operators tracking local competitive dynamics
- Law firms doing due diligence research

### Buyer persona
**"Mike"** — Operations director at a 50-person HVAC company. He knows there are 4 competitors in his market but has no systematic way to track their pricing, reviews, hiring, or expansion. He'd pay $199/mo to get a monthly report instead of spending 4 hours Googling.

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## 3. Feature Matrix by Tier

| Feature | Starter ($199) | Pro ($499) | Enterprise ($1,499+) |
|---------|:---:|:---:|:---:|
| Competitive search queries | 50/mo | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Web extraction (full pages) | 25/mo | 100/mo | Unlimited |
| News monitoring | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sentiment analysis (reviews) | Basic | Advanced | Custom models |
| Saved searches | 5 | 25 | Unlimited |
| Scheduled reports | Monthly | Weekly | Daily + real-time alerts |
| Report export | PDF | PDF + CSV | PDF + CSV + API |
| OSINT person/business dossier | — | 5/mo | Unlimited |
| Court records search | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Skip tracing | — | — | ✓ |
| White-label domain | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| API access | — | — | ✓ |
| Custom dashboard | — | — | ✓ |
| Multi-user accounts | 1 | 3 | Unlimited |
| Dedicated analyst summary | — | — | ✓ |

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## 4. Technical Architecture

See `super-search-business-architecture.html` for the visual diagram.

### Stack

| Layer | Technology | Status |
|-------|-----------|--------|
| Search engine | Super Search v2 (FastMCP, 7 providers) | ✅ Built |
| OSINT enrichment | osint-person MCP server | ✅ Built |
| API gateway | Caddy reverse proxy | ✅ Running |
| Portal frontend | React + TypeScript (new) | 🔨 To build |
| REST API | FastAPI wrapping MCP tools | 🔨 To build |
| Multi-tenant DB | PostgreSQL (new schema) | 🔨 To build |
| Auth | OAuth/SSO (existing pattern from Ops Portal) | 🔨 Adapt |
| Billing | Stripe subscriptions | 🔨 Integrate |
| Hosting | app1 (Hetzner) or netcup VPS | 🔨 Deploy |
| Reports | Markdown → PDF pipeline (pandoc/weasyprint) | 🔨 To build |
| Scheduler | Hermes cron → report generation | 🔨 Configure |

### What's already built (80%)

Super Search v2 already has:
- 7 providers with circuit breakers and health checks
- Web extraction (single + batch)
- Racing search (fastest provider wins)
- Premium search (Exa API)
- Academic, news, image search
- Web lookups (DuckDuckGo Instant + Wikipedia)
- Screenshot capture (browserless Chrome)
- OSINT person search with identity clustering, source scoring, dossier reports
- All accessible via MCP protocol on `:8899`

### What needs building (20%)

| Component | Effort | Priority |
|-----------|--------|----------|
| Multi-tenant REST API wrapper | 2-3 days | P0 |
| Customer portal (React) | 3-5 days | P0 |
| PostgreSQL schema (tenants, users, history) | 1 day | P0 |
| Stripe integration | 2 days | P1 |
| Auth (OAuth + API keys) | 1 day | P1 |
| Report generation pipeline | 2 days | P1 |
| White-label domain routing | 1 day | P2 |
| Scheduled search/monitoring | 2 days | P2 |

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## 5. Implementation Phases

### Phase 1: MVP (2 weeks)
- REST API wrapping Super Search MCP tools
- Single-tenant portal (validate the concept with 1-2 beta customers)
- Manual billing (Stripe invoice links, no integration)
- Basic report generation (markdown → email)

### Phase 2: Multi-Tenant Launch (2 weeks)
- PostgreSQL schema with tenant isolation
- Stripe subscription integration
- Customer signup flow (14-day trial)
- White-label domain support
- Saved searches + history

### Phase 3: Advanced Features (ongoing)
- Scheduled monitoring with alerts
- Sentiment analysis pipeline
- OSINT dossier automation
- API access for Enterprise tier
- Custom dashboard builder

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## 6. Pricing & Unit Economics

### Subscription Pricing

| Tier | Monthly | Annual (2 mo free) | Target CAC |
|------|---------|---------------------|------------|
| Starter | $199 | $1,990 | < $200 |
| Pro | $499 | $4,990 | < $500 |
| Enterprise | $1,499+ | Custom | < $1,000 |

### Cost Structure (per customer, estimated)

| Cost Driver | Starter | Pro | Enterprise |
|-------------|---------|-----|------------|
| Exa API (premium search) | ~$5/mo | ~$15/mo | ~$50/mo |
| Firecrawl (web extraction) | ~$3/mo | ~$10/mo | ~$30/mo |
| Server compute (netcup VPS) | Shared | Shared | Dedicated |
| Report generation (LLM) | ~$2/mo | ~$5/mo | ~$20/mo |
| **Total marginal cost** | **~$10/mo** | **~$30/mo** | **~$100/mo** |
| **Gross margin** | **95%** | **94%** | **93%** |

### Break-even
- 10 Starter customers = $1,990/mo revenue vs. ~$200/mo infra cost
- Infrastructure already paid for (Hermes, app1) — marginal cost only

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## 7. Competitive Landscape

| Competitor | What they do | Our advantage |
|------------|-------------|---------------|
| Semrush | SEO keyword + domain analytics | We do actual competitive intelligence, not SEO metrics |
| SimilarWeb | Traffic estimation | We pull from court records, corporate filings, reviews |
| Crayon | Enterprise competitive intel ($20k+) | Same capability at 1/10th the price |
| Klue | Competitive enablement | We're self-serve, not sales-enablement |
| Custom analyst | $5-15k/mo for one analyst | We're automated, always-on, $199/mo |

**Positioning:** "Competitive intelligence" tools exist — they're just either SEO tools mislabeled, or $20k+/yr enterprise suites. The SMB market is completely unserved.

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## 8. Go-to-Market

### Channel 1: Existing ITPP customers
- Liberty Tire, Forefront Wireless, DRE — existing relationships
- Offer them free beta access in exchange for testimonials

### Channel 2: Content marketing
- Publish sample competitive reports for well-known industries (HVAC, legal, dental)
- "We analyzed the top 5 HVAC companies in Savannah — here's what we found"
- LinkedIn + industry subreddits

### Channel 3: Partnerships
- Business coaches / consultants who resell to their clients
- MSPs who want to offer competitive intel as a value-add

### Launch sequence
1. Build MVP (2 weeks)
2. Beta with Liberty Tire + 1-2 others (free, 30 days)
3. Collect testimonials + refine based on feedback
4. Public launch with 3 tiers
5. Target: 10 paying customers by month 3

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## 9. Open Questions

1. **Product name:** "Super Search for Business" is functional but not marketable. Options: IntelSight, MarketPulse, BizScope, CompassIntel?
2. **Hosting:** Share app1 resources or deploy to a dedicated VPS?
3. **Data retention:** How long do we keep search history per tenant? (GDPR/CCPA implications)
4. **Rate limiting:** What's a "search" in the Starter tier? One query = one provider call, or one "session" with multiple providers?
5. **LLM for reports:** Use deepseek-v4-pro (cheap) or Claude (better summaries)? Both?

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## 10. Next Steps

- [ ] Germaine approves spec and picks a product name
- [ ] Architect the PostgreSQL multi-tenant schema
- [ ] Scaffold the FastAPI REST wrapper around Super Search MCP
- [ ] Build the React portal shell with auth
- [ ] Deploy to staging and invite beta customers