buy-vs-build-review

buy-vs-build-review is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from stdin/buy-vs-build. It costs 47 tokens per session (490 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A review guide for examining code changes for unnecessary custom code, dependencies, or services when an existing option could do the job.

In plain words
What is it for?
Reviewing diffs and pull requests, checking dependency manifests, and finding missed built-ins, platform features, mature libraries, or commercial services while preserving safety and reliability.
Why use it?
It catches ownership choices that add code, risk, maintenance, or vendor lock-in without enough benefit.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: shipped in a Claude Code plugin, but also agents/openai.yaml present.

Part of the buy-vs-build plugin — 8 skills, 1 hook shipped together

Good fit Reviewing diffs and pull requests, checking dependency manifests, and finding missed built-ins, platform features, mature libraries, or commercial services while preserving safety and reliability.

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

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install buy-vs-build, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 8 skills, 1 hook.

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 buy-vs-build-review

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/stdin/buy-vs-build/buy-vs-build-review"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/stdin/buy-vs-build/buy-vs-build-review.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 47 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 490 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 $0.00047 $0.00490
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00245
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00098
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00049

Measured 11d ago against content hash f0323ae78e4c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

buy-vs-build-review 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.

plugins/buy-vs-build/skills/buy-vs-build-review/SKILL.md · 36 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 36 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Buy vs Build Review

Review the diff for ownership choices, not just correctness. Prefer findings that reduce risk, code, dependencies, or vendor lock-in without weakening safety.

Workflow

  1. Inspect changed files and dependency manifests.
  2. Flag custom code that a built-in, native platform feature, already-installed dependency, mature open source package, or commercial service should replace.
  3. Flag new dependencies or services that duplicate built-ins, installed packages, or tiny clear code.
  4. Check that the choice was implemented well, not just chosen well. The right rung integrated badly is still a finding: a wrapper that re-does the work the dependency already does, an SSE/WebSocket/queue added without handling its real failure modes (reconnect, retry, backpressure, idempotency), or a "reuse" that grew more glue code than it removed. Confirm the change actually cut code, failure modes, and operating burden.
  5. Preserve safety boundaries: validation, security, privacy, accessibility, observability, and explicit requirements.
  6. Judge the decision note as the reviewable artifact. Where the diff makes a non-obvious or hard-to-reverse choice, the note (in the PR body or a docs/decisions/ ADR) should name the distinguishing requirement, the rejected option, and a revisit trigger. A missing or vague note is itself a finding — it is often the most valuable thing in the change, because it is what makes the tradeoff reviewable later.
  7. Report findings first, ordered by severity, with file references when possible.

Output

Use this shape:

Findings
- [severity] file:line - Issue. Better option: <rung>. Tradeoff: <why>.

Integration
- [severity] file:line - Right option, but: <unused capability / unhandled failure mode / glue code that outweighs the reuse>.

Decision gaps
- Missing or vague decision note for <choice> — name the distinguishing requirement, rejected option, and revisit trigger.

If there are no issues, say so and list any residual dependency or ownership risks.

Read the full file on GitHub · 36 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. 11d ago First seen · 36 lines · 47 tokens per session scan A f0323ae78e4c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

buy-vs-build-review is a skill published in the GitHub repository stdin/buy-vs-build (3 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 47 tokens to every session and 490 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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