I Replaced a $360/Year SaaS Tool in 4 Minutes With an AI Agent
Every solopreneur's tech stack has a dirty secret: half the tools you're paying for are glorified templates. Cookie consent banners. Email templates. Analytics dashboards. Privacy policies. You're paying $30/month for something an AI agent can build — bespoke, perfectly integrated — in the time it takes to make coffee.
I know this because I just did it. And I'm never going back.
The Problem: Death by a Thousand Subscriptions
I'm building a portfolio of AI-powered micro-businesses. At last count, I had 7 products across different domains. Each one needs the same boring infrastructure: GDPR compliance, cookie consent, privacy policies, terms of service.
My solution? Enzuzo — a cookie consent management tool at $29/month. Industry standard. Everyone uses something like it.
But here's the thing nobody talks about:
- It took me almost a full day to integrate it properly
- The widget looked generic — it didn't match my design system
- Customization required upgrading to a higher tier
- I was paying $29/month per product (or sharing one account and hoping for the best)
- It was yet another vendor dependency, another account, another thing to manage
Across my portfolio, that's potentially $348/year for something that's essentially a div with a "Accept Cookies" button.
The Experiment: Let the Agent Handle It
I work with an AI coding agent called Marvin (running on ClawdBot, powered by Claude). Marvin has full context of my codebase — he knows my React components, my Tailwind classes, my design system, everything.
So I gave him a simple instruction:
"Replace Enzuzo with native GDPR components. Cookie consent banner, privacy policy, terms of service. Match our design system."
Here's what happened:
- Marvin analyzed the existing Enzuzo integration (script tags, widget hooks, CSS overrides)
- Built three React components from scratch:
CookieConsent.tsx,PrivacyPolicy.tsx,TermsOfService.tsx - Matched our exact design system — same colors, typography, spacing. Not a generic overlay.
- Integrated them across two products (AImpactScanner and LLM.txt Mastery)
- Removed all Enzuzo references — script tags, SDK imports, configuration files
- Committed, pushed, and deployed to staging
Total time: about 4 minutes of wall clock time. The agent did all the work while I reviewed.
The Results
| Enzuzo (SaaS) | AI-Built (Native) | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $29 | $0 |
| Annual cost | $348 | $0 |
| Integration time | ~8 hours | ~4 minutes |
| Design match | Generic overlay | Pixel-perfect native |
| Customization | Limited (pay more) | Unlimited (it's your code) |
| Vendor dependency | Yes | None |
| Performance impact | External script load | Zero — it's part of your bundle |
| Updates | Vendor-controlled | You own it |
But here's the part that surprised me: the native version is actually better.
The Enzuzo widget was a floating overlay that loaded via an external script. It had its own styling that clashed with my design system. The native version? It's a proper React component that respects my theme, uses my UI library, and renders instantly with zero layout shift.
This isn't a cost-cutting compromise. It's an upgrade.
The Bigger Pattern: The Boilerplate Layer Is Dying
This isn't just about cookie banners. There's an entire category of SaaS tools I call the "boilerplate layer" — products that exist because coding the thing yourself used to be expensive and slow.
Think about it:
- Cookie consent tools (Enzuzo, CookieBot, OneTrust) — $20-100/mo
- Privacy policy generators (Termly, iubenda) — $10-25/mo
- Status page tools (Statuspage.io, Better Uptime) — $29+/mo
- Changelog tools (Headway, Beamer) — $29+/mo
- Contact form builders (Typeform for embedding) — $25+/mo
- FAQ/Help center tools — $20+/mo
- Social proof widgets (Fomo, ProveSource) — $19+/mo
- Email template builders (pre-built Mailchimp templates)
What do they all have in common?
- They're template-based — not truly custom to your product
- They inject via script tags — never quite matching your design
- They charge a monthly subscription for something that rarely changes
- They create vendor lock-in and dependency risk
- The result is always a compromise, never a perfect fit
With an AI coding agent that has full codebase context, building any of these natively takes minutes, not days. And the result is better than the SaaS tool.
Why This Works Now (And Didn't 2 Years Ago)
Let me be clear: this isn't about copying code from ChatGPT.
The key difference is agentic coding — AI agents that:
- Have full context of your codebase, not just a snippet
- Understand your design system, component library, and conventions
- Can implement, test, and deploy — not just generate code snippets you have to integrate
- Remember decisions and iterate on them
- Work across multiple files and services simultaneously
Tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and agent frameworks like ClawdBot make this possible. The agent isn't guessing at your code style — it's reading your actual components and building something that fits.
How To Do It: Practical Prompts
Here are real prompts you can use today:
Audit Your SaaS Stack
Review my tech stack and identify tools that are essentially
"boilerplate" — things that an AI agent could build as native
components. For each one, estimate: monthly cost saved,
integration complexity (low/medium/high), and whether the
native version would actually be better than the SaaS tool.
Replace Cookie Consent
Analyze how [CookieBot/Enzuzo/etc] is currently integrated in
my app. Build native React components that:
1. Show a cookie consent banner on first visit
2. Store consent in localStorage
3. Respect consent for analytics scripts (only load GA if consented)
4. Match my existing design system exactly
5. Include a cookie policy page
Remove all references to the old tool and its script tags.
Replace a Status Page
Build a simple status page component that:
1. Checks health endpoints for my services
2. Shows current status with colored indicators
3. Displays incident history from a simple JSON file
4. Matches my app's design language
No external dependencies. Deploy as a route in my existing app.
Replace Email Templates
Review my current email templates from [Mailchimp/SendGrid].
Rebuild them as React Email components using my brand colors,
fonts, and logo. Include: welcome email, password reset,
purchase confirmation, and weekly digest.
What NOT To Replace
I want to be honest about the boundaries. Not everything should be DIY'd:
- Payment processing (Stripe) — don't build this yourself. Ever. The compliance requirements alone would eat months.
- Authentication providers (for complex flows) — unless you really know what you're doing with session management, token rotation, and security.
- Email delivery infrastructure (Resend, SendGrid) — the templates are replaceable, the delivery infrastructure is not.
- Monitoring/APM (Sentry, Datadog) — these are deep expertise tools that take years to build properly.
- CDN/Hosting (Netlify, Vercel) — infrastructure is different from templates.
The rule of thumb: If the tool is primarily delivering templates and boilerplate, replace it. If it's delivering infrastructure and deep expertise, keep it.
The Solopreneur Advantage
Here's the irony: big companies can't do this easily. They have procurement processes, vendor contracts, security reviews, team consensus requirements. Replacing a $29/month tool might take a committee three months.
But solopreneurs with AI agents? We can audit our entire stack and rebuild the boilerplate layer in a weekend.
This is the real competitive advantage of AI-first solopreneurship. It's not just about building products faster — it's about eliminating entire cost categories that used to be unavoidable overhead.
My SaaS bill went down. My product quality went up. And I didn't write a single line of code myself.
What's Next
I'm documenting every tool I replace and the results. Next up: evaluating whether our $199/month AI tool subscriptions are actually earning their keep (spoiler: some aren't).
If you're a solopreneur or indie hacker paying for boilerplate SaaS, try this:
- List every tool under $50/month in your stack
- Ask: is this infrastructure or templates?
- Pick the easiest one and let your AI agent rebuild it natively
- Measure the result — is it actually better?
I bet you'll be surprised.
I'm Jamie Watters, building a portfolio of AI-powered micro-businesses solo and in public. Follow the journey on X (@Jamie_within) or LinkedIn.