tech-buy-vs-build

tech-buy-vs-build is a skill for Claude Code from geledek/enterprise-ai-transformation-skills. It costs 120 tokens per session (1,478 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A skill for choosing whether to build an AI capability internally, buy it from a vendor, or work with a partner. It separates decisions about models, workflow coordination, applications, and data infrastructure.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to classify components, assign Buy or Build decisions, choose vendor types, and make an overall AI sourcing recommendation.
Why use it?
It gives teams a structured way to compare sourcing choices instead of treating the whole AI system as one build-or-buy decision.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the enterprise-ai-transformation-skills plugin — 16 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to classify components, assign Buy or Build decisions, choose vendor types, and make an overall AI sourcing recommendation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add geledek/enterprise-ai-transformation-skills
Claude Code
/plugin install enterprise-ai-transformation-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install enterprise-ai-transformation-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 skills.

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 tech-buy-vs-build

README.md
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Your own site
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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 tech-buy-vs-build

Your own site · 80×15
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Per session 120 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,478 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 $0.00120 $0.01478
Opus 5 $0.00060 $0.00739
Sonnet 5 $0.00024 $0.00296
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00148

Measured 12d ago against content hash 827fdd846696, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

tech-buy-vs-build 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 12d 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.

skills/tech-buy-vs-build/SKILL.md · 123 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 123 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Tech — Buy vs. Build (AI Sourcing)

Decide whether to build AI capability in-house, buy from a vendor, or partner. Applies NANDA's empirical 2:1 buy advantage and a vendor-archetype selection framework.

The principle: Buy the model. Build the orchestration. Foundation models commoditize — the moat lives in orchestration, workflow design, and the skill library. (Consult nanda-tech-buy-vs-build.md and andrew-ng-three-moats.md.)

Output contract (stable): per-component Buy / Build verdicts plus an overall investment verdict.


Role 1: Map the Decision

Not all AI investment is the same decision. First, classify what is being sourced.

COMPONENT CLASSIFICATION — for each component being decided, classify:

  • Foundation model capability (GPT-level reasoning, multimodal, code generation) → almost always BUY
  • Orchestration / workflow automation → BUILD for the parts that encode your processes; BUY platforms where commodity works
  • Fine-tuned or domain-specific model → BUILD (on top of a bought base) only if the domain is genuinely proprietary
  • End-user application / interface → often BUY (SaaS or API), with customization built in-house
  • Data infrastructure → BUILD (it is company-specific; no vendor can own your data strategy)
  • Skill library / process knowledge → BUILD (this is the moat — consult hiten-skill-library.md)

Output a component map: for each component, state the type and initial BUY/BUILD instinct before analysis.

Output: COMPONENT | TYPE | INITIAL INSTINCT


Role 2: The 2:1 Evidence Test

MIT NANDA 2025 finding: firms that buy AI capability vs. build it internally are 2× more likely to capture value. (Consult 95-5-genai-divide.md)

For each BUY candidate, confirm the buy rationale holds:

  1. Does an existing vendor solution cover ≥80% of the use case? If no: buying may not solve the problem.
  2. Is the build effort primarily in the model, or in integration and workflow? If model: buy. If integration/workflow: that's a build regardless.
  3. Is the value in having this model, or in what you do with it? If value is in the doing: buying the model is the input, not the output.
  4. Is this a commodity capability or a differentiating capability? Commodity = buy. Differentiating = evaluate carefully.

Read the full file on GitHub · 123 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 12d ago First seen · 123 lines · 120 tokens per session scan A 827fdd846696

Subscribe to this mod's changes

tech-buy-vs-build is a skill published in the GitHub repository geledek/enterprise-ai-transformation-skills (9 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 120 tokens to every session and 1,478 once invoked, about $0.0006 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.

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