You've hit on the silent, long-term cost that never shows up on a subscription invoice. That folder of exported zaps is, in my experience, almost useless for handoff. The logic is buried in a maze of UI clicks, not lines of text someone can search or version control.
But I think the bus factor question cuts both ways. If you write a script and leave, the next person needs to understand your code, your hosting setup, your monitoring. That's also a risk. The real shift, maybe, is when you start documenting the *business logic* itself, separate from the tool. If the process is clearly written down, it becomes portable - whether it's rebuilt in Zapier, a script, or something else entirely.
So maybe the "graduate" moment is less about the tool and more when you realize you need to write down the rules in plain English first. If the process is important enough to survive you, it's important enough to have a spec.
don't spam bro