War-game a competitor’s response before you make your move
Simulate how rivals react to your launch, price cut, or market move — with estimated-probability counter-moves and retaliation risks.
MiroFish simulates how competitors are likely to respond to a move you are considering. You describe the move and the rivals, and the engine casts those competitors as AI agents that react to your action and to each other, alongside customers and press. It returns a structured report: the most-likely competitive response with an estimated probability, alternative counter-moves, which of your segments each would target, retaliation and price-war risks, and the signals that a rival is about to react. It estimates competitive behavior from how such players typically act — it is not real-time intelligence on a specific competitor’s plans, so use it as decision support to stress-test strategy, not as certainty.
How MiroFish simulates it
A competitive simulation is a war-game the software runs for you:
- 1
Describe your move and the rivals
The action you are weighing (a launch, price cut, feature, market entry), the specific competitors, and what you fear they will do. Attach any context that grounds the rivals’ real positioning.
- 2
Cast the competitors
Each rival becomes an agent with incentives and constraints — a fast follower, a discount defender, an incumbent protecting share — so their responses differ the way real competitors’ would.
- 3
Simulate action and counter-move
Agents react to your move and to each other over multiple rounds. Counter-moves, escalations, and coalitions emerge — including the price war you might trigger without meaning to.
- 4
Read the response report
Most-likely competitive response with estimated probability, alternative counter-moves, retaliation and price-war risks, the segments each targets, and early signals — with a chat to test how a different move changes their reaction.
A worked example
A challenger SaaS plans to launch a free tier to take share from a larger incumbent. Fear: the incumbent responds with its own free tier or a bundling move.
What you give it
- Your move
- Launch a free tier
- Rival
- Larger incumbent
- Fear
- Matching free tier / bundle
- Horizon
- 6 months
What the report estimates
- Most-likely response
- Bundle/discount, not a full free tier
- Retaliation risk
- Moderate; targets your paid conversion
- Price-war risk
- Low-to-moderate if you stay niche
- Early signal
- Sales “retention offer” to churning accounts
Illustrative output. This estimates typical competitor behavior, not a specific rival’s actual roadmap — treat counter-moves as scenarios to prepare for.
What it can’t do (honest limits)
- —It estimates likely competitor behavior from patterns — it is not intelligence on a specific rival’s real plans or roadmap.
- —It cannot see a competitor’s internal constraints, finances, or private strategy.
- —It estimates responses and risks, not exact market-share or revenue shifts.
- —Use it to prepare for a range of counter-moves and pick a more robust strategy, not to predict one certain outcome.
Questions people ask
How will my competitor respond if I make a move?
A competitive simulation estimates the most-likely response to the specific move you describe — a counter-launch, a price cut, a bundle, or ignoring you — with an estimated probability and the alternatives. It models the rival as an agent reacting to your action. Because it estimates typical behavior rather than reading a real roadmap, use it to prepare for a range of responses, not to predict one for certain.
Can I predict a competitor’s counter-move?
You can estimate it. The simulation casts the competitor as an agent with incentives and constraints and lets it react to your move over several rounds, returning the most-likely counter-move plus alternatives and the segments each would target. This is a calibrated estimate of competitive behavior for stress-testing strategy, not real-time intelligence on the specific company.
What happens if a competitor copies my feature?
Run “competitor copies the feature” as the scenario and the simulation estimates how the market reacts — whether the copy neutralizes your advantage, how customers weigh the two, and what defensible follow-up preserves your position. The output is an estimate of the reaction and your best response, useful for planning a moat before you rely on the feature alone.
Will my competitor cut prices if I launch?
The report estimates the likelihood of a price response and, crucially, whether it escalates into a price war or stays a targeted retention offer — plus which of your segments it would target. It is an estimate of typical defensive behavior, not a specific rival’s decision, so treat a “likely price cut” as a scenario to prepare a response for rather than a certainty.
How do I war-game a strategic move against rivals?
Describe your move and the rivals, run the simulation, and read the ranked counter-moves and risks — then use the follow-up chat to test alternatives (“what if we launched quietly first?”) and compare. That is a software war-game: it surfaces the reactions and escalations a planning meeting misses, as estimates you can build a more robust strategy around.
How do incumbents react to a disruptor or new entrant?
Incumbent agents in the simulation typically weigh protecting share against cannibalizing their own model, so the report estimates responses like bundling, selective discounting, or positioning rather than a full match — and flags which is most likely for your case. These are estimates of common incumbent behavior; the specific rival’s real constraints could change the response.
What’s the risk a competitor undercuts my launch?
The report estimates the probability of an undercut, the segments it targets, and how much it dents your launch — separating a one-off promo from a sustained price war. It also names the early signals that an undercut is coming. Use the estimate to decide whether to pre-empt (e.g. lock in annual plans) before launch, not as a guarantee of the rival’s move.
How do I stress-test my strategy against retaliation?
Run your strategy as the move and let the simulation generate the range of retaliations, then evaluate whether your plan holds up across them rather than only the response you expected. A strategy that survives several simulated counter-moves is sturdier than one tuned to a single guess. The report gives you those scenarios as estimates to plan against.
How do I anticipate a price war before starting one?
The simulation flags when a move is likely to trigger escalation versus a contained response, and which competitor is most likely to escalate. That lets you see a probable price war before you start it and choose a move that avoids it — or prepare for it deliberately. It is an estimate of escalation dynamics, best used to steer clear of unintended price wars.
How do I predict market-share shifts after a competitive move?
The report estimates the direction and drivers of share movement — who gains, who defends, and why — rather than exact percentages, since it models behavior rather than pulling real share data. Use it to understand which segments are contestable and what move protects or grows your position, then confirm the magnitude with your real market data.
Go deeper on the method: read the full guide on the blog →
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