The DIY-vs-Superhuman calculus is going to keep tilting toward DIY now that Codex and Claude can stitch together a usable email app in a weekend. The interesting question is whether single-user custom apps eat the long tail of vertical SaaS — Superhuman's $30/mo pricing was always indexed to the cost of building it for yourself. That floor just dropped.
The DIY-vs-Superhuman calculus is going to keep tilting toward DIY now that Codex and Claude can stitch together a usable email app in a weekend. The interesting question is whether single-user custom apps eat the long tail of vertical SaaS — Superhuman's $30/mo pricing was always indexed to the cost of building it for yourself. That floor just dropped.
Is it the customization keeping you on Pi over Codex's CLI?
that plus its purely my context. the system prompt is tiny so nothing is swaying the model - its the most bare bones.
Good read and thanks for sharing.
I tried something similar, and like you, I wouldn't recommend it!
That said, it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot.
I wrote a short article about my experience - as much to vent as anything :-)
https://medium.com/@me_74591/i-spent-a-small-fortune-building-an-ai-email-app-i-couldnt-ship-here-s-what-i-did-next-e1e04eb890c3