Build vs Buy in 2026 (Yes, We Mean AI)
Summary
Build versus buy has been part of software since there was software to buy — custom development, licensed components, SaaS, managed service providers — and the deciding factor was usually what staff you already had or could afford to hire. What makes 2026 different is agentic coding, and Carl opens with a first-hand example: an off-the-shelf theme package that tanked his desktop app’s performance, where two years ago the realistic options were file an issue, rip it out, or live with an ugly app. Instead he handed the requirements to an agent and got a replacement. Writing code is edging toward commodity, which pushes the architect’s job from deciding what is possible to justifying what is worth owning.
The tradeoffs still bite. Buying gets functionality fast but binds you to a vendor’s feature set, plugin model, and visibility into how your data is handled — and Brandon is clear that “buy” includes open source you didn’t write. Cost is where teams get optimistic: the news story about a health insurer vibe coding a CRM to replace a $600,000-a-year SaaS contract makes a great headline, but operational support, on-call, patching, admin tooling for credential resets and GDPR requests, and the hosting bill all arrive later. Brandon’s TMNT framing — time, money, and tokens — captures the modern version, especially when per-engineer AI spend starts rivaling the engineers themselves. Differentiation is the sharper filter: custom game engines were once a competitive edge until consolidation made bespoke engines an onboarding tax, and the same logic says a health insurer’s differentiation lives in its domain knowledge, not in its CRM. Lock-in gets a nuanced treatment too, split between harmful lock-in that limits strategic flexibility and acceptable lock-in that just accelerates delivery, with contracts and auto-renewal terms doing as much damage as any technical coupling.
The framework that falls out of it is four questions: is this core to the business, do you need deep customization, what is the long-term operational burden, and how hard would it be to leave later. None of these are new questions — commoditization played out the same way with carts, cars, and outsourced truck transmissions — but agentic coding put a new lens on them. Build where differentiation is real, buy for the rest, price the total cost of ownership on both sides, and remember that defining the business requirements is still your job.
Links
Referenced in the Episode
- A health insurer vibecoded a CRM and ditched its CRM contract
- Keycloak identity and access management
- Auth0 by Okta
- Okta
- Unity real-time development platform
- The npm left-pad incident
Cost, Ownership, and Operations
- Total cost of ownership (TCO)
- Day 2 operations explained
- Understanding service level agreements
- GitHub Actions billing and usage limits
- GDPR data subject requests