Replacing a $150k Looker with HTML files: can a company build its own BI platform?

Can we replace a $150k Looker with a bucket of HTML files?

Three data platform engineers at one company used Claude to build an HTML dashboard platform. Eight months later its weekly user count is near or above the company's internal Looker, and Looker usage has dropped by about a third. The platform reuses Snowflake user permissions and the dbt semantic layer, and handles the security risk of arbitrary JavaScript with isolated iframes, credential isolation and post-publish checks.

Why it matters: A data platform team built an HTML dashboard platform with Claude and reused Snowflake permissions and the dbt semantic layer to keep the build small.