---
type: concept
title: "Buy vs. Build"
description: "For a classic, well-solved use case, leaning on a robust existing platform beats building it yourself, since wiring up all the tools and integrations is real work even for a technical builder."
tags: [no-code, strategy]
videos: [this-slack-ai-personal-assistant-is-better-than-a-real-person]
created: 2026-07-21
updated: 2026-07-21
---

# Buy vs. Build

Buy vs. build is the decision, for any given use case, between adopting an existing platform and constructing the solution yourself. The heuristic Cole applies: when the use case is classic and well-solved, buy. "Since it's such a classic use case it doesn't really make sense to reinvent the wheel especially when you have platforms out there that make it so easy" ([0:01:04]). The value of a mature platform is not that building is impossible, it is that building is real, ongoing work.

The point sharpens when a technical person makes the call against their own instincts: "even me as someone who's Technical and can maybe develop something like this I don't want to reinvent the wheel when there's something as powerful as run bear" ([0:11:44]). Being able to build something is not a reason to build it. Wiring up all the tools, integrations, auth, and edge cases that a robust product already handles is exactly the cost the platform absorbs for you.

The corollary is that "buy" is not universal. The same channel that ships a personal assistant on a hosted platform also codes bespoke agents when the use case demands control that no platform offers. Buy vs. build is therefore a per-use-case judgment, not a doctrine: reach for a platform when the problem is common and the tooling burden is high, and build when the requirements are novel enough that a platform would fight you.

## Contrasts with

- [No-Code vs. Code](./no-code-vs-code.md) - the closely related build-it-yourself axis of visual vs. coded; buy-vs-build adds the third option of adopting a finished product.
- [Local vs. Cloud Decision Framework](./local-vs-cloud-decision-framework.md) - A four-question decision tree (POC or production? sensitive data? frontier-model capability needed? scaling past ~1,000 users?) that decides whether an AI stack should be self-hosted or run on managed services, instead of treating local-vs-cloud as a dogmatic all-or-nothing rule.

## Related

- [Chat Interfaces](./chat-interfaces.md) - the assistant surface a bought platform typically provides.
- [No-Code AI Agents](./no-code-agents.md) - the middle ground between buying a finished product and coding from scratch.
- [Agentic Automation](./agentic-automation.md) - where a platform's speed most often wins over hand-built plumbing.
- [AI Tech Stack](./ai-tech-stack.md) - Your chosen collection of tools and services (LLM, framework, database, automation, hosting) combined into one working AI system, picked to fit and kept simple and reusable.
- [Notion](../entities/tools/notion.md) - All-in-one docs and workspace app, supported alongside Confluence and Google Drive as a knowledge-base source for chat assistants.
- [Vertex AI](../entities/tools/vertex-ai.md) - Google's cloud AI platform offering powerful agent capabilities out of the box, recommended in Google's agent white paper.

## Sources

- [This Slack AI Personal Assistant is Better than a Real Person](../sources/this-slack-ai-personal-assistant-is-better-than-a-real-person.md) - "[0:01:04] since it's such a classic use case it doesn't really make sense to reinvent the wheel especially when you have platforms out there that make it so easy"
- [This Slack AI Personal Assistant is Better than a Real Person](../sources/this-slack-ai-personal-assistant-is-better-than-a-real-person.md) - "[0:11:44] even me as someone who's Technical and can maybe develop something like this I don't want to reinvent the wheel when there's something as powerful as run bear"
