Reverse-Engineering Prompt: Use AI to Make Smarter Build-vs-Buy Decisions
Steal This Prompt to Save Hours and Dollars
I’m nearly ready to launch my book, which means it’s visibility time. Directory backlinks looked like an easy win—until I priced them.
Retainers for hands-off local-SEO work hover anywhere between $800 and $2,000 per month for small businesses, with industry averages drifting even higher as complexity rises.
That sticker shock sent me exploring.
1. Spot the “Done-For-You” Option
A quick search surfaced a niche service that automates directory discovery, vetting, and form-fills for $99/month. It isn’t magic; it’s just a focused workflow wrapped in clean UX. Still, a bargain compared with agency rates.
2. Ask AI to Pull Back the Curtain
Instead of reaching straight for my wallet or my code editor, I fed an LLM everything I could learn about the service—feature list, pricing page, user reviews—and asked:
“Give me a high-level blueprint for building an in-house version of this tool. List required components, likely tech stack, dev hours, and ongoing maintenance.”
The model delivered a solid outline: scraping sources, authority filtering, headless-browser form filling, CAPTCHA handling, link-health checks, and a lightweight dashboard.
3. Run the Honest Cost-Benefit
That blueprint did two things:
Exposed hidden effort. Headless browsers, proxy rotation, and anti-bot gymnastics aren’t 15-minute tasks.
Mapped required skills. My learning curve (and opportunity cost) became painfully clear.
When I compared the true build cost—development time, server bills, QA cycles—to the $99 subscription, the choice was obvious: pay the fee, ship the book.
4. Generalize the Playbook
Here’s the real takeaway for busy professionals:
Clarify the pain point. What repetitive grind is stealing your team’s time?
Find an existing point solution. Someone probably productized 80 % of it.
Use AI to reverse-engineer the effort, not to clone the IP. Your goal is a feasibility study, not a knock-off.
Decide with data.
If the roadmap fits your talent, timelines, and appetite for maintenance—build.
If not—outsource and move on.
Reverse-prompting lets you see the real scope before committing dollars or dev hours. Sometimes that insight green-lights an internal project; other times (like mine) it confirms that the subscription is the smarter, cheaper path.
Either way, AI turns the lights on—so you can invest where it counts and skip where it doesn’t. Here’s the prompt.
Keep in mind that you can use this for products far beyond software. Just copy-and-replace with whatever is relevant to you, and go from there.
SYSTEM: You are a senior software architect.
USER: Below is public information on <Tool>.
<PASTE features, screenshots, reviews>
TASK 1 – Break Down
• Infer components, data flows, external APIs.
• Flag security/compliance risks.
TASK 2 – Build Up
• Draft phased implementation (MVP → v1.0).
• Estimate dev hours, cloud costs, maintenance.
TASK 3 – Evaluate
• Identify build-vs-buy tipping points.
• Suggest enhancements if we build.Run it, read it, and make the call with eyes wide open. Here’s a link to my full experiment.
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