When AI Can Clone an App, What Are You Still Paying For?

Concept illustration: similar appearances can conceal very different responsibilities.

I recently came across a Reddit post introducing REA. According to the post, it lets AI use tools to analyze existing applications, investigate how features work, and attempt to build similar functionality for your own project.

On TikTok, creator @casey.aicreates put a bolder question to it: could this be the end of software?

There is a long way from a project introduction to that conclusion. But it makes one question concrete: if the features I need are becoming easier to build myself, is my monthly software subscription still worth it?

Some features really can be built in-house

Many people use only a few features of a much larger product. Paying for an entire suite to occasionally merge files, generate a report or process a spreadsheet naturally invites a search for alternatives.

AI lowers the cost of trying, making that choice more practical.

An internal tool with clear rules and limited use may not need an elaborate product behind it. If the team knows the inputs, outputs and users, a small first version can be enough to test whether it solves the problem.

Building in-house becomes an option more teams can seriously consider.

Over time, you pay for more than features

The purchase may also include years of historical data, established ways of working together, an entry point customers already use, and the confidence that support exists when something goes wrong.

The interface can look similar. Features can be close. Moving all those relationships is often a separate project.

Customer management software is an easy example. A customer table, search and follow-up notes are only part of using it. Duplicate handling, transferring records when someone leaves, keeping integrations working, and recovering from failures also influence the choice.

Those costs remain. Building means taking on some of them yourself. Buying means assessing whether a provider can keep taking care of them.

Many teams will therefore do both: build some lightweight tools and continue using some established services.

Before deciding, compare your situation against a few practical questions:

Consideration	A good reason to try building	A good reason to keep buying a service
Scope	One task, clear rules, few users	Several collaborators and changing needs
Impact of failure	Work can continue manually during a pause	Customer service or important operations would stop
Data and connections	Little data; easy export and migration	Extensive history; several systems already depend on it
Maintenance	Someone is willing to own fixes and changes over time	No dependable maintenance capacity in the team

Try one small feature for two weeks. Track the time spent fixing, adjusting and handling exceptions, alongside subscription savings. A demo shows that something can be built. Actual use tells you whether it is worth continuing to maintain.

More tools still need coordination

How does information in a new tool enter an existing process? Customer records live in the CRM, discussions in Slack and documents in Notion. A new app adds another place to check.

Time spent copying between them can consume the money saved on tools.

There is no immediate need to replace every service already in use. Helping them work together may be a better first step.

Leina offers one approach: assign work in team chat, gather information through authorized Apps, and prepare or carry out the requested next steps. Available operations depend on the connection and account permissions.

If you are considering another product just to get a summary across tools, try completing the task with the systems you already have. For instance, bring CRM records and meeting notes into one view of each customer:

Using the connected CRM and this month’s customer meeting notes, summarize active customer work. List recent progress, unresolved questions and next steps already agreed in the records, with a source for each item. List conflicts between the two sources separately. Do not change the original records.

See whether the result meets your need before buying or building another system. Existing tools keep doing what they do well, while people do less copying and searching.

Assess new tools individually too: which belong in the existing process, and which are occasional utilities that do not need an added maintenance commitment?

Ask one more question before renewing

AI will continue to change the cost of implementing features, and how we assess subscriptions.

Alongside “Could I build this feature myself?”, ask: what work does this service keep taking off my hands? If I replace it, who takes that work on?

Consider subscription fees, maintenance time, migration and collaboration together to make a decision that fits your team.

The discussion around REA is worth following. Easier implementation puts pressure on software companies and gives users more options. For a team running a business, the decision to keep paying also depends on whether the product will be dependable tomorrow, and how much of their own time it frees up.

If some of your work gets stuck between tools, look for your services in the Leina integration directory, then create Leina and try completing one task. Get a useful result from the data you already have before deciding where your next software budget should go.