# CE Competitive Research — Session Log 2026-03-19

## What was built (Phase 1)
- Folder: `work/active-projects/ce-competitive-research/`
- Express server on port 3060 (`pipeline/server.js`)
- Brand ingest pipeline (`pipeline/brand-ingest/ingest.js`):
  - Playwright scrapes URL, dismisses cookie banners
  - Extracts OG images, large img tags, CSS hero backgrounds (top 8 saved)
  - Claude Haiku analysis → brand-profile.json (strict short-form values)
  - TODO: swap MODEL to claude-sonnet-4-6 before production (top of ingest.js)
- Submission UI (`ui/submission/index.html`) — CE styleguide, 6-step bar
- Report viewer (`ui/report-viewer/index.html`) — brand guidelines layout:
  - Brand color hero (primary color full panel, 72px Larken)
  - 3-col identity row: color palette | OG image | typography Aa specimen
  - 6-image grid from extracted brand photos
  - Editorial row: positioning (Larken italic) + meta
  - Offerings strip (numbered cards)
- Data saved to: `data/outputs/[report-id]/brand-profile.json` + `assets/brand-images/`
- API: POST /api/ingest → {reportId} | GET /api/report/:id | PATCH /api/report/:id

## Where we stopped
- Assaf not happy with visual quality of the brand overview page
- Core tension: Stage 1 only has what's on the public website — real brand photography comes in Stage 3 (deep research with creative-visual-research skill)
- He wants brand-guidelines aesthetic: colorful panels, real imagery, mosaic grid — reference image he sent showed Obama Foundation / agency-quality design
- He said "I'll do something else and we can try tomorrow"

## What to try tomorrow
- Option A: Run creative-visual-research pipeline (Stage 3) IN Stage 1 for the submitted brand only — pull agency images + Instagram before showing the profile
- Option B: Generate a visual brand overview using Gemini image generation (Nano Banana Pro) based on the extracted brand data
- Option C: Focus on getting the competitor discovery (Stage 2) working first, use the visual output as the gallery/scoring page rather than the profile card

## Assaf's key feedback points
1. "The mosaic stuff I liked" — image grids (6-up) like eToro pages
2. Wants brand-guidelines aesthetic: color strips, type specimens, real photography
3. "No simple screenshots" — browser captures are ugly
4. The CE competition pages (eToro) ARE the reference standard

## To restart tomorrow
```bash
cd work/active-projects/ce-competitive-research
node pipeline/server.js
# Then start tunnel:
cloudflared tunnel --url http://localhost:3060 &
```