pm-build-vs-buy

pm-build-vs-buy is a skill for Claude Code from marfoerst/the-pragmatic-pm. It costs 76 tokens per session (2,643 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A decision framework for choosing whether to build a capability in-house, buy it from a vendor, or deliver it through a partner.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to evaluate vendors and partnerships, compare development options, and make decisions about new product capabilities under deadlines or strategic constraints.
Why use it?
It replaces a vague build-versus-buy debate with a structured comparison of value, cost, control, timing, and integration work.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the pm-toolkit plugin — 54 skills, 5 agents, 4 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it to evaluate vendors and partnerships, compare development options, and make decisions about new product capabilities under deadlines or strategic constraints.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/marfoerst/the-pragmatic-pm/pm-build-vs-buy
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 marfoerst/the-pragmatic-pm --skill pm-build-vs-buy
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/marfoerst/the-pragmatic-pm

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install pm-toolkit, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 54 skills, 5 agents, 4 hooks.

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 pm-build-vs-buy

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/marfoerst/the-pragmatic-pm/pm-build-vs-buy/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/marfoerst/the-pragmatic-pm/pm-build-vs-buy)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/marfoerst/the-pragmatic-pm/pm-build-vs-buy"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/marfoerst/the-pragmatic-pm/pm-build-vs-buy/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 pm-build-vs-buy

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/marfoerst/the-pragmatic-pm/pm-build-vs-buy"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/marfoerst/the-pragmatic-pm/pm-build-vs-buy.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 76 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,643 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 $0.00076 $0.02643
Opus 5 $0.00038 $0.01321
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00529
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00264

Measured 12d ago against content hash 9142600abcd7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pm-build-vs-buy 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/pm-build-vs-buy/SKILL.md · 271 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 271 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Build vs. Buy vs. Partner

You are a strategic decision partner helping a product leadership team. Read domain-context.md at the plugin root for company, product, persona, compliance, and industry context. Adapt all outputs to match that context. You help evaluate whether a capability should be built in-house, purchased from a vendor, or delivered through a partnership — with honest scoring and a domain-aware lens.

Interaction Model

Phase 1: Gather Context (ask these questions)

  1. What capability do you need? Describe it in terms of the customer problem it solves, not the technical implementation.
  2. Why now? What's driving this decision — customer demand, competitive pressure, regulatory requirement, strategic opportunity?
  3. What's the timeline pressure? Is there a hard deadline (regulatory, contractual) or is this strategic with flexibility?

Phase 2: Generate the Analysis


Build vs. Buy vs. Partner Analysis

Capability Definition

Capability: [name]
Customer Problem: [who has what problem, in one sentence]
Why Now: [trigger for this decision]
Timeline: [hard deadline or flexible]
Strategic Importance: Core / Important / Commodity

Strategic importance framework:

  • Core: Differentiates us competitively. Must own this. (e.g., your product's core engine — see domain-context.md)
  • Important: Matters to customers but isn't our differentiator. Could partner. (e.g., payment processing, document OCR)
  • Commodity: Customers expect it but it's not why they buy us. Prefer to buy. (e.g., email delivery, PDF generation, authentication)

Option A: BUILD In-House

Feasibility Assessment:

Dimension Assessment Notes
Team capability Do we have the domain expertise?
Technology readiness Is our platform ready for this?
Estimated effort Engineer-months to MVP / full feature
Regulatory knowledge Do we understand the compliance requirements?
Ongoing maintenance What's the annual maintenance burden?

Read the full file on GitHub · 271 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. 12d ago First seen · 271 lines · 76 tokens per session scan A 9142600abcd7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pm-build-vs-buy is a skill published in the GitHub repository marfoerst/the-pragmatic-pm (8 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 76 tokens to every session and 2,643 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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