refactor: update README files to reflect the transition of SurfSense to an open web research platform for AI agents

surfsense_web/changelog/content/2026-07-05.mdx

@@ -2,11 +2,11 @@
 date: "2026-07-05"
 ---
 
-## SurfSense's Next Chapter: Competitive Intelligence for AI Agents
+## SurfSense's Next Chapter: Open Web Research for AI Agents
 
 Happy Independence Day to everyone celebrating in the United States! We hope you had a wonderful Fourth of July. It felt like the right weekend for a declaration of our own.
 
-Today we are pointing SurfSense at a single mission: **give your AI agents competitive intelligence.**
+Today we are pointing SurfSense at a single mission: **give your AI agents the primitives to research the open web.**
 
 ### How we got here
 
@@ -14,20 +14,20 @@ For the past couple of months we set out to build the best general research agen
 
 That same period settled a bigger question. Agentic tools like Claude, OpenCode, Hermes, and OpenClaw have proven themselves. Agents that plan, use tools, and finish multi-step work on their own are no longer a demo, they are how work gets done. General research assistance is becoming something every capable agent does out of the box.
 
-So we asked what these agents still lack. Not reasoning. Not tools. **Live market data and the workflows around it.** An agent asked "what are competitors charging this week?" or "what is Reddit saying about us since the launch?" has nowhere trustworthy to look. We want to be one of the first, and hopefully the definitive, open-source competitive intelligence agent platforms. This focus also lets our team pour all of our energy into the high-value workflows that genuinely need AI automation.
+So we asked what these agents still lack. Not reasoning. Not tools. **Live data from the places where answers actually live, and the workflows around it.** An agent asked "what is Reddit saying about this product since launch?" or "what do the reviews of these ten places actually complain about?" has nowhere trustworthy to look. Official platform APIs are rate-limited or missing, scraping plumbing is brittle, and driving a browser with an LLM burns minutes and tokens per page. We want to be the open-source platform that gives agents those primitives.
 
 ### What SurfSense is now
 
-- **Platform-native connectors for live market data.** [Reddit](/reddit), [YouTube](/youtube), [Google Maps](/google-maps), [Google Search](/google-search), and the [open web](/web-crawl). Each one is a typed REST endpoint you can call from any language with your SurfSense API key.
+- **Platform-native connectors for live web data.** [Reddit](/reddit), [YouTube](/youtube), [Google Maps](/google-maps), [Google Search](/google-search), and the [open web](/web-crawl). Each one is a typed REST endpoint returning structured JSON — posts, comments, transcripts, reviews, SERPs, pages — that you can call from any language with your SurfSense API key. And the catalog keeps growing beyond social platforms and search.
 - **An MCP server that makes every connector an agent tool.** Add the [SurfSense MCP server](/mcp-server) to Claude, Cursor, or your own agent framework. And with [external MCP connectors](/external-mcp-connectors), your SurfSense agents can use any MCP server too, with one-click OAuth for apps like Notion, Slack, and Jira.
-- **An agent harness, not just raw data.** Retries, structured output, and credit metering are built in, so agents go from a question to a brief without you building the plumbing.
-- **Automations for the workflows that matter.** Scheduled and event-triggered agents watch competitor pricing, track brand mentions, monitor rankings and reviews, then deliver briefs and alerts.
+- **An agent harness, not just raw data.** Retries, structured output, and credit metering are built in, so agents go from a question to a cited brief without you building the plumbing.
+- **Automations for the workflows that matter.** Scheduled and event-triggered agents watch pages, track mentions, monitor rankings and reviews, then deliver briefs and alerts.
 - **Simpler pricing.** Self-hosting stays free with no metering. Cloud is pay as you go: start with $5 of free credit, connectors bill per item returned, crawls per page fetched, models at provider cost. Failed calls are never billed. Details on the [pricing page](/pricing).
 
 ### To our existing users: nothing you rely on is going away
 
-This is an addition, not a replacement. Your knowledge base, chat with citations, reports, podcasts, presentations, automations, and collaborative chats all keep working exactly as they do today. You can still upload files and sync Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox. Self-hosting stays free and open source, and your existing deployments keep running without any action from you. What changes is where we invest: expect deeper connectors, sharper agent workflows, and broader market coverage.
+This is an addition, not a replacement. Your knowledge base, chat with citations, reports, podcasts, presentations, automations, and collaborative chats all keep working exactly as they do today. You can still upload files and sync Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox. Self-hosting stays free and open source, and your existing deployments keep running without any action from you. What changes is where we invest: expect deeper connectors, sharper agent workflows, and broader coverage of the open web.
 
 If you are building agents, [grab an API key](/login) or add the MCP server, and start with the [connector catalog](/connectors). Tell us what you are building on [Discord](https://discord.gg/ejRNvftDp9) or [GitHub](https://github.com/MODSetter/SurfSense).
 
-We think the next great competitive intelligence tool will not be a dashboard. It will be an agent that already knows your market. We are building the platform it runs on.
+We think the next great research tool will not be another dashboard or another chat window. It will be an agent that can actually reach the live web. We are building the platform it runs on.

surfsense_web/lib/announcements/announcements-data.ts

@@ -15,9 +15,9 @@ import type { Announcement } from "@/contracts/types/announcement.types";
 export const announcements: Announcement[] = [
 	{
 		id: "2026-07-05-competitive-intelligence-direction",
-		title: "SurfSense's Next Chapter: Competitive Intelligence for AI Agents",
+		title: "SurfSense's Next Chapter: Open Web Research for AI Agents",
 		description:
-			"Happy Independence Day to everyone celebrating in the United States! We picked this week to share some big news: SurfSense is now the open-source competitive intelligence agent platform. Your agents monitor competitors, track rankings, and listen to your market with live data from Reddit, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Search, and the open web, through one REST API or MCP server. Everything you rely on today keeps working, and self-hosting stays free.",
+			"Happy Independence Day to everyone celebrating in the United States! We picked this week to share some big news: SurfSense is now the open-source open web research platform for AI agents. Your agents research the live web with structured data from Reddit, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Search, and any page on the open web, through one REST API or MCP server. Everything you rely on today keeps working, and self-hosting stays free.",
 		category: "update",
 		date: "2026-07-05T00:00:00Z",
 		startTime: "2026-07-05T00:00:00Z",
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ export const announcements: Announcement[] = [
 		spotlight: true,
 		image: {
 			src: "/announcements/competitive-intelligence.png",
-			alt: "Platform data tiles for social, video, maps, search, and the web flowing into a central AI core that outputs market charts and alerts.",
+			alt: "Platform data tiles for social, video, maps, search, and the web flowing into a central AI core that outputs research briefs and alerts.",
 		},
 		link: {
 			label: "Read the full announcement",