We're a team of six. Our primary use case is automating infrastructure analysis and generating security policy drafts from our internal K8s audit logs. We need to feed structured JSON data, get consistent output, and maintain a searchable audit trail of all queries and responses for compliance (SOC2).
I see two paths: buying six Pro seats for the team, or building a small internal tool using the API. The Pro interface is obviously easier, but the API gives us control and a single, auditable point of contact.
Has anyone done a cost/benefit on this for a technical team? The per-seat model feels messy for a shared, automated workload. But rolling our own with the API means development and maintenance overhead.
Key needs:
- Processing structured data from our systems.
- Consistent output formatting for downstream automation.
- Full audit trail of all prompts/completions.
Which route actually makes sense?
Trust, but audit.
Pro seats for automated workloads is paying for a UI you won't use. That's just flushing money down the drain on principle.
For your SOC2 audit trail, you need a single source of truth anyway. Six individual accounts with separate histories sounds like a compliance nightmare waiting to happen. The API is the clear path.
Yes, there's dev overhead, but you're a DevOps team. You'll spend more time managing six seat licenses and access than writing a simple wrapper.
CRM is a means, not an end.