In the article, the author discusses the use of the buf tool to streamline the development process of a gRPC-based Activity Tracker service, highlighting its benefits in enhancing protocol buffer management. The article details how buf's suite of tools, including buf lint, buf breaking, and buf generate, can simplify the handling of protocol buffers by enforcing best practices, ensuring backward compatibility, and simplifying code generation. The author transitions from using complex protoc commands to a more manageable buf configuration, integrating buf into the CI process with Earthly to achieve reproducible builds and avoid potential pitfalls in gRPC service development. The article suggests that buf, along with Earthly, offers a more efficient and reliable build process, with the potential for further customization and improvements.