> If you build an awesome app and want to charge for it, what stops me from just pointing "Claude Epic 2.5" at it and making a pixel perfect replica?

It's the same argument people used to use against open sourcing your code for a SaaS: "If I can just clone the repository and run the service myself, why is there a hosted product?"

There is so much more going on though, from how you run something, to how you can react to changes and how you perpetually try to avoid the spaghetti ball from building, so improvements don't take longer and longer to implement and break other things.

Even if the original code is the same, two operators of that service can lead to two very different experiences, not to mention how the service will look like in a year.

I would say almost all of these companies do have part of their stack as private IP, but regardless that's a good point...

Hope your right! I imagine the truth will fall somewhere in between our difference in opinion