Skate vs building it yourself
Building your own in-app assistant: a model, a tool for each action, and the UI to approve and show results.
| Feature | Skate | building it yourself |
|---|---|---|
| Does the task in your app | Yes. Clicks, fills and navigates your UI as the signed-in user. | Yes, for each action you write a tool for. |
| Answers questions | Yes, from what is on the page. | Yes, if you connect your docs. |
| Guides with tours | No tours. It does the task instead. | If you build them. |
| Checks the result | Yes. Reads the page before it says done. | If you build it. |
| Install | One script tag. | Your own code, then upkeep each time the app changes. |
When to pick building it yourself
- You have engineers free for it, and it is core to your product.
- Your actions already have clean APIs.
- You need full control of the model and data path.
When to pick Skate
- Your engineers are busy on the product.
- You want every task in the UI covered, not only the ones you wrote tools for.
- You want approvals and the page check without building them. Estimate your build.
Our own summary of what a build involves. Spot an error? Tell us.