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Can some SaaS be replaced with AI-driven builds? Yes. But the infrastructure, maintenance and security burdens are very real, and sometimes the savings really aren't worth it when you account for your own time to build and run that software. On the other hand, there are SaaS companies way too comfortable resting on their laurels, offering a substandard product at an exorbitant price while pointing to a supposedly unassailable moat. I don't believe the truth is so black and white on the matter, and this newsletter is for all of the above and more.
Each quarter I pick a piece of software that businesses pay for and rebuild it with AI coding tools. Each build gets 13 weeks to reach a stated goal, and the goal is never "it looks like the real thing". It's real use: teams other than mine running their work on the imitation instead of the tool they pay for.
Build 01: HubSpot Sales Hub Professional.
Started October 20, 2026. Deadline January 19, 2027.
As of November 3: about 40 hours (mine), 186.5 million tokens and $176.70 in real money. Updated every Tuesday with the new issue.
Issue 1: Somebody's gettin' duped. What this is, why it's in public, and how the receipts work.
Issue 2: HubSpot could crush me overnight. What the imitation has to do, how it gets judged, and my prediction.
A build graduates when it's functional, stable and safe enough to release, as is, to the world. Graduating means I release the code to everyone, or I hand the project to a team that wants to take it on. Who decides? It's me. It will always be me.
Once a build graduates, there's a monthly maintenance update and post-mortem, on a day that isn't Tuesday. What happens when the person who built it leaves? I think that's the question for any software, and building it is the easy part.
Builds that don't make it get published with the same detail as the ones that do.
One quarter per build, every hour logged, every hand named, graduates get maintained, and failures get published with the same detail as wins. The full rules are at duped.dev/rules, so you can hold me to them.
Reply to any issue. I especially want to hear what software you'd most like to see duped next, and why.
One issue every Tuesday.