Build vs Buy

Two routes to the same endpoint — a direct wire versus a stacked adapter layer

API vs MCP: When Your Agent Should Talk to the Provider Directly

Model Context Protocol won. It’s now “the boring infrastructure layer” — 78% of enterprise AI teams run MCP-backed agents in production, and it just got its biggest update ever, a fully stateless rewrite meant for “really big players” with tens of thousands of agents. So the question a solo builder faces is pointed: if the protocol is the standard, why would I ever write a raw API call myself? The instinct to just grab the API is right more often than the hype suggests. Here’s the rule. ...

Reuse or rebuild — two diverging paths, a custody decision

Reuse vs Rebuild: The Custody Rule for Solo Builders

The build-vs-buy debate is the oldest argument in software, and for years it was boring math: build if the license would cost more than the engineering. AI broke that math. When a solo builder can scaffold in a weekend what used to take a quarter, the cost case for reusing something — a library, a SaaS tool, an open-source project — quietly stopped being the deciding factor. What replaced it is a quieter question: who owns this thing when it matters? That’s not a cost question. It’s a custody question — and it’s the one that actually decides, in practice, whether your one-person company survives its third year. ...