Kill SaaS: Build Your Own Tools With AI
SaaS is dead. Long live Saas.
Today I sat with some of my ops team on the 1,208th product demo call of my professional life. We’re growing fast and we’re looking for a CMMS system.
As a little extra context, I run a condiment company and we do all of our own manufacturing out of a dedicated facility in Central TX. We have a decent amount of equipment and that equipment needs to be consistently maintained and repaired. It’s full-time work for our 3-man maintenance team and it can be a lot to keep up with. Every area has equipment and every piece of equipment has components and those components all have parts and some of those parts even have their own parts. All of those items have to be meticulously managed. Production can be down for days or weeks just because you ran out of stock of a very specific gasket.
Enter CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) which is basically just software that helps you plan, monitor, and report maintenance tasks. You can also track work orders and schedule preventive maintenance. You can do this sort of work in Excel or Google Sheets or even project management tools like Monday.com or Asana. There are also a whole host of specialized CMMS systems that cost anywhere from a few thousand a year to hundreds of thousands a year, depending on the magnitude of the operation you are managing.
We’re getting ours for free.
Building on the Fly
So there we sat in this demo call. The sales guy going over the features. Us asking the regular set of questions.
And then it hit me right in the face: This is just a database with some fancy overlays and widgets.
Actually, Notion has done a pretty good job teaching me that everything is a database. Certainly any app you are using and especially a system like this, where the primary goal is to connect a database of equipment with a database of parts with a database of vendor contacts with a database of dates and times (a calendar) with a database of employees with a database of permission layers, etc.
So while the guy is talking features, I pop open Claude and give it the prompt that I want to build a CMMS MVP in Replit and want it to give me the starting prompt:
You can steal this or some version of it if you want. Also:
You should never buy a list of prompts or a prompt guide from the thousands of online AI gurus. You should just get Claude or ChatGPT to help you write prompts for the tasks you want.
Replit is a Gamechanger
If you’re not experimenting with Replit, I would really suggest that you get started like yesterday. Cursor is also really good. It is absolutely a bridge to the future and, in the meantime, can actually make really helpful stuff and save businesses and individuals a ton of time and money.
I pretty regularly rage against the expensive, extractive middle market in our industry and just in general. SaaS is one that happens to have been over a $100 BILLION industry in the US in 2024 and is growing fast. Tools from project management and CRM to chat and workspace management to ERP and finance. There’s just a shitload of SaaS. Companies are spending $1000-$3000 a year per employee on SaaS.
I’ll admit that Replit is also SaaS. And so is ChatGPT. And Claude. Etc, etc. But these are tools that let you CREATE INFINITE OTHER TOOLS for very little extra cost.
So, I put the prompt from Claude into Replit and it starts working on an MVP. We chat back and forth in Agent mode as it builds an interactive dashboard, databases for my vendors and parts, and a scheduling tool for PMs:
Stay in the Agent View
I joined Replit a while ago, before they had deployed Replit Agent. I initially signed up to take a few intro coding classes because I like to build my own simple little work tools instead of buying some overpriced, feature-heavy POS.
When they first introduced Agent, I would pop in and out of the Agent pane, mostly just to get some automated troubleshooting without spending hours in Stack Overflow (RIP). But now I never leave the Agent view:
“Let’s make this change next: When the Parts modal pops up, I want it to list all the parts currently attached to the selected piece of equipment or specify that no parts are currently assigned. Under that should be an Add Parts button. This button opens a modal that allows the user to select from the existing parts catalog. They should also have the option here to Create New Part if the part they need is not listed.”
I don’t write any code, I just type English. And Agent just gets to work doing it:
By the time the demo call was over (45 min) I had a functional MVP
When the rep mentioned a feature I liked, I just told Replit Agent to make it in real time. And when the demo got boring I came up with other features that I wanted.
I added an Analytics section which runs reporting for different parts of the plant:
I added a shopping cart feature for the vendor list where I can see the full relevant catalog for each vendor and my current stock position so I can easily consolidate what I need into one PO:
I added an Emergency button that will be most prominent from the Operator view since they won’t have all the same work order views as a Technician, Manager, or Admin:
And, of course, Replit will automatically develop for desktop, tablet, and smartphone all in a single interface:
Ready to Launch
By the time the SaaS salesperson (super nice guy btw) can even pull together pricing (~$3000/yr for 5 users) and send us a quote, we will already be deployed with this MVP CMMS system that I built while we were on the Zoom call. And while it’s not completely free, it is essentially free.
Yes, this will be a valuable system. But I’m not trying to sell it to you. It’s not for sale, don’t ask. I’m trying to tell you that this is the world we live in today. If people running and working in businesses start wrapping their brains around this stuff, SaaS will completely change and we will have a value unlock the likes of which the world has never witnessed.
Get Started
You can start a free account on Replit or Cursor and just try making something easy and free using either platform’s agent mode. This is not an ad, I just love these tools. If you build a single tool that your business can actually use, it will be well worth the $20/month.
Let me know what you think and what you’re building.
Trying together parts in Belize@#$&* Thanks, this is a game changer!