Software doesn’t have to be permanent
I’ve been building software that I might throw away next week. Not because it doesn’t work. Because by then it might have done its job.
I’ve been using Grok Bot to build dashboards for family investments and explore a hypothetical SpaceX/Tesla merger (I own a bit of Tesla).
Screenshots and transaction exports were enough. Within minutes, I had hosted pages showing my holdings and scenarios, with market prices refreshing hourly. The bot has no account access: holdings still depend on what I supply.
For this job, they’re more useful than spreadsheets. I can compare assumptions without rearranging cells. I still sense-check the calculations. But what struck me most was how little commitment building them required.
A tool for a decision, not a software product
We create documents for meetings and spreadsheets for analyses, then leave plenty unopened forever. We don’t insist that every document needs a product roadmap.
Software usually carries a different expectation. Specifying, building, deploying and maintaining it costs enough that we expect repeated use. When a useful first version takes minutes, that calculation changes. One question or conversation might justify it.
That’s disposable software. Not careless software. Something whose useful life might be shorter than the procurement process we once used to buy it.
Keep the recipe. You don’t have to keep the kitchen
This isn’t limited to hosted pages. Applications running on servers, pulling data or connecting systems can have a short useful life too.
Maintain the ones that earn their keep. Otherwise, switch off the servers, scheduled tasks and connections. Retain the code and infrastructure deployment definitions in a repository if you might use them again.
Dependencies change and permissions expire, so keep enough context to explain deployment and data requirements. A repository isn’t a guarantee of instant resurrection. But the asset can be the ability to recreate the tool, rather than keeping it running indefinitely.
Why make slides when you could make something people can use?
Microsoft’s OneDrive announcements point this way: Copilot-generated interactive HTML reports, plus HTML editing, live preview and collaboration. It’s not live in my tenant yet, but web pages are moving alongside ordinary business documents.
Consider project data in a SharePoint library. Rather than repeatedly extracting it into slides, create a small application for the discussion. Let people filter data, inspect detail and explore assumptions, using a snapshot or an authorised live connection as appropriate.
Presentations won’t disappear. Arguments still need a narrative and decisions need recording. But sometimes a temporary application will communicate the underlying data better. Keep it if it's useful, otherwise bin it.
Disposable doesn’t mean unaccountable
Cheap to build obviously doesn’t mean safe to trust. Check the data, calculations and assumptions. Protect personal information and limit access. A read-only dashboard warrants different controls from something that changes records or initiates transactions.
For material decisions, retain the relevant inputs, assumptions and results as required. The application can be temporary without the decision record being disposable. And collaboration on an HTML file doesn’t solve permissions or secure its data connections.
Someone also needs to own retirement. Hundreds of forgotten tools, stale feeds and unexplained cloud charges would just automate the creation of another problem!
Bottom line
Grok Bot is my consumer bot of choice, but the tool isn’t the point. Building software can become an ordinary part of thinking through a problem, not a separate project requiring justification.
Some tools become durable assets. Others answer a question and stop. Both make sense when the value exceeds the cost and risk. We don’t need every useful application to become a permanent system. Sometimes it just needs to do its job, then get out of the way.
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