But the longer I use them, the more issues I notice with them through becoming a power-user and start to understand exactly how they work. Then usually before my first months subscription runs out; if I find them useful, I do not renew the subscription, but I spend a weekend with the latest SOTA LLM in Cursor or VCcode to build out the core capabilities for myself, and then never go back to the service. Often, even as a power-user, if some SaaS has 10-20 features, I really only need 5 of them. And then I can add 2-3 more that they wouldn't ever build. The best part is that I do not need to be "production grade", because I am the only user. I don't even need cloud services, except third party APIs, because I just spin up the repo on my localhost, and launch the apps capabilities when I need them. If there is a bug, I fix it right then and there. Security? Who cares. They'd have to access my computer first.
So quite naturally I am wondering, how many other people are doing this, and how this reflects on the whole SaaS landscape. And at the same time, morals and ethics, because I am basically out here stealing ideas from people who build products, and turning them into private apps for myself with no goal of ever monetizing them. Often I am just going back and forth between those products, and copying their features into my own app to avoid needing to pay for them. And it feels like its becoming easier and easier to do this.
austin-cheney•2mo ago
For example a self hosted application that provides real time service monitoring with performance metrics and can proxy that information between other data systems versus some full stack app that provides service information from the cloud.
On the other side of the coin I do write my own apps to avoid reliance on media streaming subscriptions.