Use Claude to Understand Any Business 10x Faster
My New AI Investing Agent
“Can you stop asking weird questions?”
My wife said it half-laughing.
We were on vication, sitting at the hotel restaurant.
I had started asking the hotel staff questions.
It’s a habit I’ve developed. I always try to understand how any business actually works.
Why do people choose this hotel instead of the one next door?
Where does the real profit come from?
The rooms?
The drinks?
The upsells?
How many bookings do they actually need each night just to cover the fixed costs?
And what makes customers come back again next year?
When I started investing, I was amazed by how deeply top investors can understand a business and how quickly they can do it.
Buffett once said he can decide on a deal in minutes.
Because he has run this mental exercise thousands of times over decades.
Buffett built that ability through:
75 years of studying businesses
Reading thousands of annual reports
Seeing hundreds of companies from the inside through Berkshire Hathaway
Without that level of repetition, it is very hard to reach the same mastery.
But today we have something Buffett never had.
AI.
And when it’s used with the right system, it can accelerate that learning process dramatically.
Today I’ll show the exact Claude workflow that produces a 16-page deep-dive report on any company in one click.
Not AI fluff.
A real analysis of how the business actually works.
The $1M Bottleneck in Investing
The biggest bottleneck in investing isn’t finding ideas.
it’s the gap between:
“This stock looks interesting.”
and
“I actually understand how this business makes money.”
Done manually, that takes hours.
Sometimes days..
I built an AI Agent to close that gap.
Instead of spending days digging through reports, the system builds a clear deep-dive in minutes.
By the end of this article, you’ll have :
A clear understanding of how the workflow runs step by step
a file you can download and use to run the same system every time you want to understand a new company
The goal isn’t to replace thinking.
It’s to help you understand the business much faster.
The Claude Business Analysis Agent
This workflow runs automatically using a Claude Skill.
Before going further, a quick reminder.
What are Claude Skills?
A Claude Skill is a reusable workflow instructions for the AI.
Think of it as a small analysis playbook.
You give a simple input.
Claude runs the process behind the scenes.
Inside the skill are the steps, prompts, and instructions that guide the analysis.
The skill I built runs a four-step system.
Each step builds on the previous one.
Here is the 4 steps process:
You type the company name in Claude.
Behind the scenes, the system runs the workflow:
Research the business model: how the company makes money, margins, cash flow, and cycles
Research the industry: value chain, competition, barriers to entry, and profit pools
Synthesize everything into one structured report
Fact-check the key numbers and claims
I could have just given you the file to download.
But that’s not the goal.
I want you to understand what’s inside the system for 2 reasons:
So you know exactly what the AI is doing before trusting the output.
To see the difference between generic AI workflows and one designed specifically for investment research by an experienced investor.
How the system works :
Install Claude Desktop Cowork on your computer.
Activate Extended Thinking.
Use Opus 4.6
Select a folder to work in
Type the name of a company ( for example: Copart).
Trigger the skill: type “Run the Business Overview Skill on Copart”
Let the system run the full workflow automatically
What happens behind the scenes
The picture below shows what actually happens once the skill is triggered.
when you type “Run the Business Overview Skill on Copart”
You are simply telling Claude which company to analyze and what skill to use
Then the system starts reading the skill structure.
At this stage Claude is preparing the research plan.
It is not writing yet.
It is assembling the analytical framework that will guide the investigation.
The structure of my skill
At the top, there is the SKILL md file.
It tells Claude what the skill is supposed to produce, how the workflow should run, and in what order each step should happen.
Then Claude opens the references folder.
This is where the real analytical engines live.
Inside that folder, each file contains a deep research prompt ( the same kind of prompt many of you already know from my Prompt Library.)
So again, this is not Claude starting from zero.
It is Claude loading a research system that I already designed in advance.
You can see the sequence happening:
it reads the skill file
it opens the reference prompts
it loads the company research prompt
it loads the industry research prompt
Then the real research begins searching 400+ sources.
Step 1 : Run the business overview Prompt
The first layer runs a deep research prompt focused entirely on the company.
It analyzes:
How the company makes money
What drives revenue growth
Where margins come from
How cash is generated
Which parts of the business are cyclical
If you have my prompt library, you’ve already seen this one.
It’s the same business analysis prompt many of you are already using.
But at this point you might wonder:
“But Mostapha… why not just run this prompt alone?”
You could, and that’s very helpful.
But a business never exists in isolation.
So understanding the company alone gives you only half of the picture.
That’s why the system adds another layer.
The first prompt explains the company.
The next one explains the industry around it.
Step 2 :Understanding the Industry
The second layer runs another deep research prompt.
But this time focused on the industry.
This layer analyzes:
How the industry works
Where value is created along the value chain
Who captures most of the profit pool
What barriers to entry actually exist
What drives industry-level growth
This gives context.
Without the industry, the business model is incomplete.
This Wasn’t Possible Before
This is worth pausing on for a second..
Before Claude Skills, you could run both prompts manually.
Try to connect the 2 reports yourself.
It works.
But Skills inside claude make it faster
Instead of manually copying prompts, running them one by one, and connecting the outputs yourself, the Skill turns the whole process into a single workflow.
You type one trigger.
Claude loads the prompts.
Runs them in the right order.
And builds the full analysis automatically.
What used to be a manual process becomes a repeatable research system.
Step 3 : The Business & Industry Primer
The third layer organizes everything.
Instead of scattered notes , the system produces one clear, structured report by combining the 2 prompts:
It explains, in clear sections:
What the company actually does
How it makes money
How the industry works
Where the economics come from
What drives growth
What risks actually matter
The goal is simple: summry and make complex things clear.
Step 4 : Fact-Checking
There is one last layer in the skill.
After the report is generated, the system runs a verification pass.
This layer checks:
Important numbers
Key claims
Financial data
Industry facts
It flags anything uncertain.
It corrects what needs to be corrected.
The goal: make the output reliable and trustworthy.
Because a confident-sounding report that’s wrong is worse than no report at all.
The Result
Once the skill finishes, you get one clear output:
Before jumping into valuation.
Before building spreadsheets.
Before forming an investment thesis.
Because serious investing always starts the same way:
Understand the business first.
Install the Skill
Download the file attached below: