TL;DR A renewal notice arrived for our attendance SaaS: 300 people, ¥200/person/month, ¥720,000 annually. The number was acceptable. The problem was fit, not cost — two requirements (actual travel-cost reconciliation; network-based in-office determination) fell outside the standard SaaS spec. I rebuilt the system in Google Apps Script (GAS) in a few hours, with AI as the coding resource. I call this human role an "AI Director." Beyond cost: agility (same-day requirement-to-system), data ownership (lock-in avoidance), and a new development flow — build a working sample, then hand it off to a SIer for production lift. Bonus thoughts on where programmer knowledge stays valuable (specialist domains, post-AI quality review). A gold-rush analogy. Chapter 1: Requirements — Why the SaaS Stopped Fitting A generic SaaS is designed around business processes shared by many companies. That's a sound design philosophy.…