Can also say the year that subscriptions go down, because now you can finally build your own systems exactly to your liking. Save money and have something that works just for you. LLMs are awesome.
good question. maintenance is cheap with tools like astra/opus. also, these aren't production level applications, so I don't need to worry about it being "perfect" (though there's no such thing)
What happens when these companies decide to start increasing the cost/token, exceeding the cost of hiring an engineer or paying for an external service in the first place?
We have lived with lackluster B2B and enterprise tools for so long that we have become numb to how bad they are.
Being able to build something that works just how you want with minimal investment is a huge value add.
I ditched web analytics platforms and just send events in jsonl format to disk.
I have a regularly scheduled job that imports it all into a duckdb database and updates a very custom report. I can also ask random questions like “is there a cohort of users who use feature A and B?”.
yep, excellent use case! I did something similar with my gmail recently, because I hate using gmail's UI and I also hate that I don't get access to all my data, but I've begun to regularly backup all my email into a local postgres DB (including attachments). AI has also allowed me to get a full backup of my entire email and archive it onto my own storage. and the best part of this: I might be able to finally get off gmail
If you're paying a subscription for anything, it's unlikely to be something you'd want to replace for an internal tool. Yeah, you can easily vibe code the basic functionality of a Slack/Jira/Confluence/Ashby/Salesforce replacement in a workday now, but 1) there's no chance you capture all functionality needed by your business on the first pass, you're going to be getting inundated with feature requests as soon as you roll it out, and 2) the ongoing maintenance cost is going to be much higher than expected. Not just maintaining a server and database, which is cheap, but training people how to use your tool instead of the industry standard one. There's a reason Atlassian and Salesforce stocks have recovered after the theorized "SaaSocalypse" which never materialized, it's just not an overall cost savings to build this stuff yourself.
Where internal tools shine is internal operational workflows that are being done manually. You're not replacing Slack or Salesforce, you're replacing the current process where a developer needs to SSH into the server to run a SQL query, or where the Operations team fills out a Google doc which the Finance team pastes into an Excel spreadsheet which runs a bunch of VBA calculations.
If you haven’t yet drunk the /grilling Kool Aid, give it a go
I totally agree! I usually combine it with the ask user question tool in Claude Code which makes decision-making a breeze.
Can also say the year that subscriptions go down, because now you can finally build your own systems exactly to your liking. Save money and have something that works just for you. LLMs are awesome.
Who pays for ongoing maintenance of all those things you built and now own
good question. maintenance is cheap with tools like astra/opus. also, these aren't production level applications, so I don't need to worry about it being "perfect" (though there's no such thing)
What happens when these companies decide to start increasing the cost/token, exceeding the cost of hiring an engineer or paying for an external service in the first place?
We have lived with lackluster B2B and enterprise tools for so long that we have become numb to how bad they are.
Being able to build something that works just how you want with minimal investment is a huge value add.
I ditched web analytics platforms and just send events in jsonl format to disk.
I have a regularly scheduled job that imports it all into a duckdb database and updates a very custom report. I can also ask random questions like “is there a cohort of users who use feature A and B?”.
It’s super lightweight and incredible.
yep, excellent use case! I did something similar with my gmail recently, because I hate using gmail's UI and I also hate that I don't get access to all my data, but I've begun to regularly backup all my email into a local postgres DB (including attachments). AI has also allowed me to get a full backup of my entire email and archive it onto my own storage. and the best part of this: I might be able to finally get off gmail
If you're paying a subscription for anything, it's unlikely to be something you'd want to replace for an internal tool. Yeah, you can easily vibe code the basic functionality of a Slack/Jira/Confluence/Ashby/Salesforce replacement in a workday now, but 1) there's no chance you capture all functionality needed by your business on the first pass, you're going to be getting inundated with feature requests as soon as you roll it out, and 2) the ongoing maintenance cost is going to be much higher than expected. Not just maintaining a server and database, which is cheap, but training people how to use your tool instead of the industry standard one. There's a reason Atlassian and Salesforce stocks have recovered after the theorized "SaaSocalypse" which never materialized, it's just not an overall cost savings to build this stuff yourself.
Where internal tools shine is internal operational workflows that are being done manually. You're not replacing Slack or Salesforce, you're replacing the current process where a developer needs to SSH into the server to run a SQL query, or where the Operations team fills out a Google doc which the Finance team pastes into an Excel spreadsheet which runs a bunch of VBA calculations.
Can build our own buggy substandard turds instead of customising an off the shelf buggy turd.
How far we have come!
Anyone noticed the trend of tools being more read than write, with writes shifting to agentic tools and natural language instruction?
It makes me wonder about the web a bit and whether it becomes glossier, more video driven but ultimately less directly maleable.
Do people prefer streaming text over static pages?