The template
Ours Our version, based on what Jordan Rejaud described. He shared no prompt or harness. Fill in the [BRACKETS].
You audit my business's paid tools and help me replace the ones we don't need to pay for.
AUDIT (read-only)
- Read the expenses in my accounting software for the last 12 months. For each recurring charge, find what it's for and where our code or team uses it.
- For each one, say whether it could be replaced by: an AI model call, an open-source tool we self-host on a server we already pay for, a small program you write, or a free plan of the same tool. Or say it should stay.
- Give me a table: tool, yearly cost, what it does for us, proposed replacement, effort, risk, and the yearly saving.
- Don't change anything yet. Wait for me to pick which ones to do.
MIGRATE (one at a time, only the ones I pick)
- Write a plan first: what moves, how data and users move over, how we test it, and how we roll back. Wait for my OK.
- Build the replacement in a branch, run it alongside the old tool, and show me the tests.
- Anything touching user logins or customer data gets an extra check from me before it goes live.
NEVER
- Never cancel a subscription, delete data, or switch off the old tool. Tell me when the replacement has run cleanly and I'll cancel it myself.
- Never spend money or message a customer or vendor without my yes for that specific item.
- Sending, buying, posting, deleting and paying always need my yes.
What they did
- He runs Parakeet, a SaaS he built by hand, with no employees. He says agents now handle support, deploys, monitoring, email and ads, and it takes him about 4 hours a week.
- One agent, already connected to his accounting software, went through every expense line by line and worked out what each charge was for.
- Anything an AI model, an open-source self-hosted program or a small program the agents could write themselves could replace was marked to go.
- The agents did the migrations and built what was missing, including a command-line tool and an AI assistant for the new help desk.
- His table: Auth0 to Better Auth ($959 a year), Zendesk to Libredesk ($1,452), Sentry and New Relic to GlitchTip, with New Relic moved to its free plan ($1,578), a paid sports API to ESPN's free feed ($828), and a horoscope API plus site to model-written horoscopes on Cloudflare ($692). Total: $5,509 a year.
- Auth0 charged per active user, so it grew with every signup; he says its last month was $231.
- On r/ClaudeCode he says he does it all from the command line in Claude Code, on a harness he built himself.
- Heads-up: he shared no prompt, harness or repo, and he offers this as a service at the end of the article. Our version is built only from his article and Reddit post.
“Anything that spends money or messages a real person waits for my yes first”— Jordan Rejaud (strangenewworld.net), Blog
Summary written by Agent Cookbook. The amount is quoted as the creator stated it in their own public post or interview; we link it but can't see their accounts. See the original for full context. How we verify
Our notes
- What it takes
- Claude Code, read access to your accounting software or a year of expenses, a server you already pay for, and open-source replacements (his were Better Auth, Libredesk and GlitchTip). He runs his own harness and shared no prompt; ours is built from his article.
- Where it breaks
- Counting the saving before the old plan is cancelled, moving user logins without real-account tests and a rollback, forgetting what self-hosted tools cost to run and watch, and reading his 61% cost drop as the SaaS saving when staff cuts are part of it.
- Human checkpoint
- He says anything that spends money or messages a person waits for his yes. In ours you approve each migration plan, test the replacement and cancel the old service yourself.
- Tools involved
- Claude Code (he runs it from the command line with his own harness), Your accounting software, readable by the agent, A server you already pay for, for self-hosted replacements, Open-source replacements (his: Better Auth, Libredesk, GlitchTip)
✓ Verified Source link checked and still live. Notes by Thomas, editor. How we verify
Approval rule
🛡
In his setup and ours, anything that spends money or messages a person waits for a yes. In our version you also approve each migration plan, test the replacement, and cancel the old service yourself. Sending, buying, posting, deleting and paying always need a human.
Set it up
- Give Claude Code read access to your accounting software, or an export of a year of expenses.
- Run the audit and read its table. Cross out anything you'd rather keep paying for.
- Pick one migration, ideally a low-risk one like error tracking, and approve its plan.
- Let the agent build the replacement on a server you already run and run it alongside the old tool.
- Once it's run cleanly, cancel the old service yourself and note the saving.
- Move on to the next one. Leave logins and customer-facing tools for when you trust the process.
Common failures
⚠
- Counting the saving before the migration is done. The money only stops when you cancel the old plan.
- Moving user logins carelessly. He moved his off Auth0; a bad auth migration locks customers out, so test with real accounts and keep a rollback.
- Forgetting the new costs. Self-hosted tools need a server and someone to watch them; his agents also monitor his servers.
- Replacing a tool the team relies on for features nobody listed. Ask what each tool does for you before it goes.
- Reading his 61% as the SaaS saving. Most of that drop came from elsewhere, including staff.
Variations
- Audit only: stop after the table and decide yourself.
- Free-plan check: before migrating, see if the same tool's free plan covers you, as he did with New Relic.
- Pair with the zombie-sub audit: cancel tools nothing uses first, then migrate the ones you do use.
Related setups: Claude Code SaaS audit: a $600/mo zombie sub cut → · Replace a $399/mo SaaS tool with a Grok Bot team → · An agent does the bookkeeping while you approve → · A family firm's ERP run by Claude Code agents → · Grok Bot that found duplicate vendor payments → · Payback: find money you're owed → · Weekly ops variance report by an agent →
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