build-vs-buy-vs-partner

build-vs-buy-vs-partner is a skill for Claude Code from daddia/claude-for-strategy. It costs 61 tokens per session (756 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A decision-making skill for comparing whether to build a missing capability, buy it from another company, or work with a partner. It examines strategic importance, the difference between core and commodity work, and the typical failure risks of each path.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when a team has a specific capability gap and needs a structured build-versus-buy-versus-partner recommendation tied to business priorities.
Why use it?
It prevents the decision from becoming only a cost comparison and makes the main risks and possible safeguards explicit. It also identifies missing information that must be resolved before a recommendation.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions CLAUDE.md.

Part of the corporate-strategy plugin — 6 skills, 1 agent shipped together

Good fit Use it when a team has a specific capability gap and needs a structured build-versus-buy-versus-partner recommendation tied to business priorities.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/daddia/claude-for-strategy/build-vs-buy-vs-partner
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add daddia/claude-for-strategy --skill build-vs-buy-vs-partner
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/daddia/claude-for-strategy

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install corporate-strategy, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills, 1 agent.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for build-vs-buy-vs-partner

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/daddia/claude-for-strategy/build-vs-buy-vs-partner/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/daddia/claude-for-strategy/build-vs-buy-vs-partner)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/daddia/claude-for-strategy/build-vs-buy-vs-partner"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/daddia/claude-for-strategy/build-vs-buy-vs-partner/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for build-vs-buy-vs-partner

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/daddia/claude-for-strategy/build-vs-buy-vs-partner"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/daddia/claude-for-strategy/build-vs-buy-vs-partner.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 61 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 756 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00061 $0.00756
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00378
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00151
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00076

Measured 11d ago against content hash 650a96c3cb73, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

build-vs-buy-vs-partner scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

corporate-strategy/skills/build-vs-buy-vs-partner/SKILL.md · 86 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 86 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Build vs. Buy vs. Partner

When to use

When a capability gap needs build/buy/partner framing — forces each path's known failure pattern into the conversation, not cost comparison alone.

What this skill does not do

  • Does not close capability gaps without strategic relevance — question worth closing first.
  • Does not re-derive synergy discipline — buy path defers to synergy-stress-test.
  • Does not pick path without naming failure pattern — recommendation includes mitigation.

Preconditions

Input If missing
Capability gap stated precisely Ask before evaluating paths
Strategic priority link Question whether gap worth closing

Provisional mode

Missing build track record: note haircut cannot be calibrated — [review].

Trust spine

  • Strategic advice vs. support (mandatory): Compares paths with failure patterns; strategist owns choice.
  • Escalation: No exit mechanism on partner path → flag; buy without synergy test → route to synergy-stress-test.

Workflow

  1. State capability gap and strategic relevance.
  2. Core vs commodity test.
  3. Build: time/cost + overrun failure pattern + haircut from track record.
  4. Buy: headline terms + synergy handoff if live.
  5. Partner: structure + exit mechanism.
  6. Recommend with most likely failure pattern and mitigation.

Output format

CAPABILITY GAP: [...]
CORE OR COMMODITY: [...]
BUILD: [...] — Failure pattern risk: [...]
BUY: [...] — [synergy-stress-test if live]
PARTNER: [...] — Exit mechanism: [...]
RECOMMENDATION: [build | buy | partner] — [failure pattern + mitigation]

Worked example

Input: Need ML fraud model. Team has no ML delivery track record.

Excerpt: Commodity-adjacent capability; BUILD failure pattern high (overrun history); PARTNER exit mechanism missing — flag. Recommend partner with defined exit or buy [review].

Quality checks before delivering

  • Core/commodity named
  • Each path's failure pattern explicit
  • Partner exit asked
  • Buy synergies routed if needed

Read the full file on GitHub · 86 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 86 lines · 61 tokens per session scan A 650a96c3cb73

Subscribe to this mod's changes

build-vs-buy-vs-partner is a skill published in the GitHub repository daddia/claude-for-strategy (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 61 tokens to every session and 756 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

swarmclaw

AI agent runtime and multi-agent orchestration platform. Teaches agents how to use SwarmClaw's 6 primitive tools, persistent memory, dreaming, delegation, connectors, credentials, and the skill system. Use when an agent is running on SwarmClaw and needs to understand the platform's capabilities.

swarmclawai/swarmclaw · 67 tokens

spec-herdr-review

Run visible multi-agent spec reviews in Herdr through interactive agent CLIs such as Claude, Codex, Copilot/GLM, or Grok/Composer. Supports two modes — a spec review (the design, before implementation) and an implementation review (the implemented diff vs the spec, after the calling model has built it). Ask for…

stewartcelani/skills · 88 tokens

gpmc

Read-only Active Directory Group Policy inventory via LDAP — list GPOs, show OU/site links (enabled/disabled/enforced), find unlinked GPOs, search by name, and gpresult for the current user. Use when the user asks about GPOs, Group Policy, GPMC, linked vs unlinked policies, RSoP, what applies to this user, or runs…

stewartcelani/skills · 115 tokens

grok-session

Find and inspect local Grok CLI conversations by session GUID, title, phrase, or recent activity. Use when the user runs /grok-session, asks what Grok work they have been doing lately, says a Grok conversation died, ran out of context, crashed, or exhausted usage, wants to resume a named session, or wants to continue…

stewartcelani/skills · 85 tokens

claude-session

Find and inspect local Claude Code conversations by session GUID, title, phrase, or recent activity. Use when the user runs /claude-session, asks what Claude Code work they have been doing lately, says a Claude Code conversation died, ran out of context, crashed, or exhausted usage, wants to resume a named…

stewartcelani/skills · 80 tokens

codex-session

Find and inspect local Codex task conversations, including by session GUID, title, recent activity, or a phrase from the conversation. Use when the user runs /codex-session, says a prior Codex conversation died or ran out of context, wants to resume a named task, asks what a local Codex task did, or wants to continue…

stewartcelani/skills · 81 tokens