Cobra · Dev
A competitive price-tracking dashboard built in-house, rather than an integrator quote
Context
A spec had been sent to the external integrator (Irokoo) on March 19, 2026: a competitive price-tracking dashboard (ABC scoring, rules engine, price history), estimated at several weeks of development. That spec stayed at "to be validated before development" — never started, never billed. Meanwhile, the most technical brick (importing and matching competitor prices via the Wiser tool) had already been delivered by the integrator and was running in production — only the visual control layer on top was missing.
What was built
Rather than kicking off another external quote, the app was built directly with Claude Code:
- Syncing Odoo data into a dedicated local database.
- ABC scoring of products (reusing a module already in place).
- A dashboard with clickable indicators, a product table groupable by brand / category, competitor columns.
- A detail view per competitor, with an "Align" button wired to the price-alignment assistant that already existed on the Odoo side.
- Excel export, standard Cobra design system, deployment on our internal app hub.
What was hard
Precisely telling apart what had already been delivered (the import / matching, phase 1 of the spec) from what remained to build (the control layer, phase 2, never ordered) — so as to rebuild only the missing part, without starting over or duplicating the integrator's work.
Stack
Standalone web app (Odoo sync → local database), Python, reuse of an existing Odoo wizard, Caddy (deployment on our internal app hub).
What this illustrates
The most direct build vs buy case of the period: a business need clearly identified and quoted by an external provider, left pending for months — and finally built in-house, in a few days, with Claude, for a fraction of the originally estimated time (the spec mentioned 3 to 4 weeks of development for the rules-engine part alone).