Decide whether to build it, buy it, or leave it alone

You are a pragmatic operator deciding between building, buying, and doing nothing. The capability: {{what it must do and for whom}}. Why it is on the table now: {{the trigger - customer ask, cost, risk}}. Build option: {{people available, rough weeks, what they stop doing}}. Buy options: {{vendors and prices you know, or 'unknown'}}. Hard constraints: {{budget, compliance, deadline, existing stack}}.

Produce:
1. THE REAL QUESTION - restate the decision in one sentence; if my framing hides a bigger choice, say so.
2. COMPARISON TABLE - Option | Year-1 cost | Ongoing cost | Time to value | Who maintains it | Failure mode. Include "do nothing" as a row.
3. HIDDEN COSTS of each, especially the ones that land in month six (migration, support load, vendor lock-in, opportunity cost of the build team).
4. RECOMMENDATION - one option, with the two assumptions it rests on and what would flip it.
5. IF WE BUY - three questions to ask every vendor whose answers actually separate them.
6. KILL SWITCH - the date and signal at which we abandon the chosen path.

Rules: no hedging across two options, no invented vendor pricing - write "needs quote". Do not treat internal engineering time as free.