+What building it yourself are
Many teams start with a proxy, a regex list and a prompt to a model asking 'is this safe?'. It works for the first agent.
+Side by side
Capability by capability
| Capability | Building it yourself | Intertrace |
|---|---|---|
Proxy in the request path | ✓ | ✓ |
Two-signal decisions that keep false blocks low | Partial | ✓ |
Benign-traffic regression suite gating every release | — | ✓ |
Approvals, permits and replay protection | Partial | ✓ |
MCP pinning, discovery and attack graph | — | ✓ |
Evidence exports mapped to frameworks | — | ✓ |
Maintained as attack techniques change | Partial | ✓ |
“Building it yourself” describes the typical category, not a specific product. Individual products vary.
+Honest answer
Which do you need?
+Building it yourself alone is enough when
- You have one agent, one team and low stakes
- You have security engineers to maintain detection full-time
- Nobody outside the team needs evidence
+You need a decision layer when
- False positives start blocking real work
- Agents multiply across teams, clouds and coding tools
- Auditors, customers or regulators ask for decision records
+Better together
Keep your in-house proxy if you have one — Intertrace can take over the decisions while your routing stays yours.
+Other comparisons
+ The AI watching your AI
Run the comparison on your traffic.
Bring your own prompts and tool calls. We'll show what each approach decides.