Decision skill · FreeFit Loop

When do you need your own engineers?

When does your startup need its own engineers instead of vendors — and what are the real signals?

Version 1.0 · Plain text · No email required · CC BY-SA 4.0

What this skill does

Hand this file to Claude or ChatGPT. The assistant interviews you, one question at a time, through this decision's determining questions — on your specifics. It then applies the decision rules to your answers and gives you the recommendation plainly, with the conditions under which it would change.

The decision it executes

When do you need your own engineers? →

The signals that outsourced engineering has hit its ceiling, what the first in-house hire really costs, and the sequencing that keeps the product alive during the switch.

The guide is the canonical version: determining questions, paths with dated costs, what I'd do, and limits. It belongs to The Fit Loop.

Escalation clause

An honest tool knows its edges.

This decision stops being self-serve — and needs a human with scars in the room — when:

Pre-revenue with no iteration pressure — the product changes rarely and no user is waiting; the framework will overstate the case to hire.
The product is in maintenance mode by design (cash cow, sunset, side business).
A technical co-founder is already in the building — that's a different decision about roles and equity, not about hiring.
Acqui-hire or venture-studio arrangements, where the "vendor" is structurally part of the cap table or the deal.

When this skill revises

Optional. The download never depends on it.

Skill revisions and cost updates are announced in the newsletter.