# Forge vs Building It Yourself

**Short answer.** Plenty of teams write their own hooks and scripts to get
some of what Forge does — a `PreToolUse` hook here, a token-counting script
there. It works, and it's real engineering effort that most teams end up
duplicating independently, agent by agent, with no cross-agent consistency
and no audit trail unless someone deliberately builds one.

## What each one actually is

**Building it yourself** means custom hooks and scripts, maintained by your
own team, re-implemented every time you add a second agent to the mix — a
Claude Code hook does not transfer to Cursor.

**Maistik Forge** is one static binary with [24 adapters plus a generic
one](/guide/agents). The same four controls run behind every agent it
configures, maintained as a product rather than internal tooling someone
inherits.

## Feature comparison

| | Building it yourself | Maistik Forge |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Works across multiple agents | Only if you build it per agent | 24 adapters + generic, out of the box |
| Who maintains it | Your team, indefinitely | Forge |
| Cross-agent consistency | Only if every script stays in sync by hand | Same controls everywhere |
| Time to a protected first run | Days to weeks of internal engineering | About [ten minutes](/getting-started) |
| Audit trail | Only if you build one | [Timeline](/harness/timeline), built in |
| Cost | Engineering time, ongoing | [Paid licence](/pricing), no maintenance burden |

## Questions people actually ask

### We already have a PreToolUse hook that blocks dangerous commands — why would we need Forge?

Keep it. Forge's [guardrails gate](/harness/guardrails) does the same job, so
compare the two directly. The harder part to replicate yourself is usually
the [verify circuit-breaker](/harness/circuit-breaker) and [spend
ledger](/harness/budget) — both need state that survives across runs, not
just a single hook firing once.

### Doesn't building it ourselves give us more control?

It gives you more code to maintain. Forge's state lives in `.forge/` —
plain, git-committed, and inspectable like any other file in the repo. You
are not trading away visibility, you are trading away the maintenance
burden.