Changelog

Marketplace installs are now scored as a current install flow

The VS Code marketplace counter is scored on its current install flow instead of its lifetime all-time count — closing the last cumulative-vs-flow unit mismatch, the one that kept a flat incumbent locked at the top of the Size axis.

• ●The marketplace publishes only a lifetime install count, while the npm tools' size counter is a weekly download flow. Percentiling a 5-year cumulative stock against 1-week flows is the same unit bug method v6 fixed on the Growth axis, still live on the Size axis — it handed a near-max Size percentile (98.9) to a tool whose installs are essentially flat (+0.26% over the current 30-day window).
• ●The marketplace counter is now scored on its current install flow: the weekly rate derived from the daily shadow series over the same 30-day window the Growth axis uses. The raw lifetime counter (74.6M) stays recorded in the shadow files; the scored and displayed size is the flow (44,982 installs/week).
• ●Effect: GitHub Copilot's Size percentile drops 98.9 → 37.5 and its Power 74.7 → 59.9 on identical signals — #1 → #4 in Coding. Coding's top is now Codex 73.0 · Claude Code 67.8 · Gemini CLI 67.6, with Copilot fourth — the two CLI agents the market actually talks about lead the board.
• ●Nothing else moves: the change touches only the marketplace counter family (Copilot is its only tool). Every category's top-7 composition is identical on every day of the series; other tools shift at most ±0.7 Power from the size-percentile re-rank, flipping only a handful of sub-point near-ties.
• ●Weights, tiers, the momentum booster and the growth axis (v6) are unchanged; this is a unit fix on one source, not a rebalancing.

Why · The charter says Power is a 30-day-ish snapshot of current public activity, not a legacy score — but a lifetime install counter only ever grows, so a mature tool held a near-max Size percentile forever on history alone. Scoring the counter's current flow measures today's activity — the same principle that made v6 score growth for cumulative counters — and it answers the criticism of the #1 spot without hand-adjusting any tool.

Growth is now scored for every index tool

Closed the hole that let cumulative-counter tools skip the 30% Growth axis — every index tool now has a real growth score, ending the free pass for big-but-flat incumbents.

• ●Previously, 30-day growth existed only for npm tools (vendor-provided weekly history). Every other size counter — VS Code marketplace installs, Discord members, HuggingFace downloads, GitHub stars — is cumulative, so those tools' growth was a hole, and a hole is renormalized away: they were scored on their 3 best components and never had to defend the Growth axis.
• ●Now, cumulative-counter tools get a real growth score derived from the daily shadow series: the size delta over each tool's own tracked window (up to 30 days back).
• ●Crucially, cumulative % growth (small % of a huge all-time base) and npm weekly-flow growth (large swings on a weekly denominator) are NOT the same kind of number, so each tool is percentiled within its own counter family — npm tools vs npm tools, cumulative tools vs cumulative tools. Mixing them would just re-create the unit bug on the growth axis.
• ●Effect on the leaderboard: GitHub Copilot's Power drops 87.7 → 76.4 — its all-time install count is essentially flat (+0.26% over the window), and that flatness is now scored instead of skipped. Coding's top is now a genuine three-way contest (Copilot 76.4 · Claude Code 74.7 · Codex 72.5). Declining footprints (e.g. some Discord-member tools) now show real negative growth.
• ●Weights unchanged (Size 30 · Growth 30 · Mentions 20 · Search 20 + momentum booster); this is a coverage fix, not a rebalancing — it fills a component that was always supposed to be there.

Why · The index claims Power is a current-activity snapshot, not a legacy score — but a cumulative all-time counter only ever grows, so a flat incumbent could hold a near-max Size percentile forever while skipping Growth entirely. Filling the growth hole from data we already collect makes the ranking reflect current reality, and answers the most common criticism of the #1 spot without hand-adjusting any tool.

Power Race — time-lapse videos of the rankings

Every category now has an auto-generated bar-race video replaying its Power rankings over the last 30 days — the market as a time-lapse, regenerated on every deploy.

• ●New /race page: one 1280×720 bar-race video per category (Coding, Image, Video, Audio), replaying the last 30 days of Power rankings — bars glide as tools climb and fall, ending on the latest snapshot.
• ●Generated at build time (SVG frames rendered from the daily snapshot series, ranks interpolated so movement animates, encoded to MP4): every deploy produces a fresh video that always ends on the current day, so the share asset is never stale.
• ●Each video is downloadable as an MP4 (h264, ~10s, under 1 MB) — sized and encoded to post directly to X and other feeds.
• ●A ▶ Race link on every category page jumps to its time-lapse; the videos are also embedded on /race for inline autoplay.
• ●No methodology change: the videos visualize the existing daily snapshot series — the Power formula, weights and cohort are unchanged.

Why · The daily time series is the index's real moat — no static ranking site can show the market moving. Race Mode turns that into the most shareable format there is: a daily, zero-effort video of who climbed and who fell, ready to post each morning.

Cross-category Overall board + head-to-head versus pages

Two new ways to read and share the index: a single cross-category Overall ranking, and a head-to-head page for every same-category pair.

• ●New OVERALL board: all 43 index tools across Coding, Image, Video and Audio ranked together on the shared global percentile cohort — the single cross-category "#1 AI tool" view. Labeled as a soft comparison: Power is percentile-normalized within the cohort, not a like-for-like market-share measure (charter §5).
• ●New /vs/[pair] pages: 224 same-category head-to-heads, each with an overlaid rank-trajectory chart (lines crossing = a lead change), a winner-highlighted component table, a days-ahead tally and a per-pair share card.
• ●New /today digest: the snapshot's stories, category leaders and the biggest 24H surge/climb on one page, with a diversified summary share card.
• ●Linkable chart windows: /tool/[slug]?from=DATE windows a tool's performance chart from that date to today, so any chart view can be linked directly.
• ●Every Overall, versus and today state unfurls into a live share card (build-time OG images regenerated each deploy); the sitemap and SEO checks cover the new routes.
• ●No methodology change: the Power formula, weights and cohort are unchanged — these are new presentations of the existing index.

Why · Turns the index from rankings you read into claims and comparisons people share. The Overall board is the strongest single claim the site can make; versus pages are the argument-starting format; both reuse the existing build-time OG pipeline so every pasted link unfurls into a live card.

MiMo Code joins the Coding index

MiMo Code (vendor: Xiaomi) enters the Coding index as a full index tool — verified public counters (npm @mimo-ai/cli weekly downloads + GitHub XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-Code stars), so it competes on Power like the other CLI agents.

• ●MiMo Code (vendor: Xiaomi) enters the Coding index — the open-source coding agent from the MiMo AI division (MiMo-V2.5 family), npm CLI + public GitHub repo.
• ●Ranks #12 in Coding at Power 8.1 on its first snapshot — a young tool whose post-launch npm volume has declined (-69% 30d), so it opens at the bottom of the cohort and climbs from there.
• ●Attention counts via HN + Trends only; no honest dedicated subreddit exists (r/MiMo is radio-telecom, r/mimocode is a dormant referral sub) — the same honest hole pika/hailuo carry.

Why · Xiaomi's MiMo is the coding-agent built on the MiMo-V2.5 flagship line — a real, verifiable player in the CLI-agent market (alongside Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Kimi Code CLI). It joins on its own collected signals and earns its rank the same way everyone else does.

AI Audio launches as the fourth category

Music, voice and sound-generation tools join the index as their own category — 15 ranked tools plus a 3-tool watchlist, with 5 days of backfilled history.

• ●New AI AUDIO category: 15 index tools ranked on the same Power formula — Suno, Kokoro, MusicGen (Meta), ElevenLabs, F5-TTS, Stable Audio (Stability AI), Udio, Fish Speech, Orpheus (Canopy Labs), MeloTTS (MyShell), Zonos (Zyphra), GPT-SoVITS, ChatTTS, CosyVoice (Alibaba), IndexTTS (Bilibili).
• ●3-tool Audio watchlist (attention-only, never merged into the index): MiniMax Audio, PlayHT, Kits AI — no qualifying public usage counter yet.
• ●Index tools qualify on verified public counters: Discord members for the closed giants (Suno ~395k, ElevenLabs, Udio — the Runway/Pika path), HF downloads and GitHub stars for the open models.
• ●Suno debuts at #1 Audio (Power 77.5) on the first snapshot — the strongest opening leader of any category so far.
• ●Audio tools are scored against the same global percentile cohort as Coding, Image and Video; existing tools' percentiles recalibrated slightly on the day the cohort grew to 57 tools.
• ●Applies from the 2026-09-02 shadow probe forward — the category ships with 5 days of real history, not an empty page.
• ●Global registry now spans 57 tools (43 index + 14 watchlist) across Coding, Image, Video and Audio; weights unchanged.

Why · Audio generation is the fourth AI software market with the same measurable shape as the others: closed consumer flagships with public community counters (Suno, Udio, ElevenLabs) on top of a deep open-weights ecosystem (Kokoro, MusicGen, F5-TTS). A 5-day isolated shadow probe confirmed stable scoring before launch — Suno has led every probe day since 2026-09-02.

AI Video launches as the third category

Video generation tools join the index as their own category — 8 ranked tools plus a 4-tool watchlist, from this snapshot forward.

• ●New AI VIDEO category: 8 index tools ranked on the same Power formula — Runway, Wan (Alibaba), LTX Video (Lightricks), Pika, Stable Video (Stability AI), HunyuanVideo (Tencent), Open-Sora (HPC-AI Tech), CogVideoX (Zhipu AI).
• ●4-tool Video watchlist (attention-only, never merged into the index): Sora (OpenAI), Veo (Google), Kling (Kuaishou), Hailuo (MiniMax) — no qualifying public usage counter yet.
• ●Index tools qualify on verified public counters: HF model downloads, GitHub stars, and Discord members (Runway, Pika — the same closed-product path as the image category's Discord-anchored tools).
• ●Video tools are scored against the same global percentile cohort as Coding and Image, so cross-category Power values stay comparable; existing tools' percentiles recalibrated slightly on the day the cohort grew.
• ●Applies from the 2026-08-27 snapshot forward; earlier snapshots keep the two-category index.
• ●Global registry now spans 38 tools (28 index + 10 watchlist) across Coding, Image and Video; weights unchanged.

Why · Video generation is the third major AI software market with the same shape as coding and image: a handful of closed flagships (Sora, Veo, Kling) plus a deep open-weight ecosystem (Wan, LTX, HunyuanVideo) measurable through public counters. Launching after a 4-day isolated data probe means the new category ships with real history instead of an empty page.

Seedance joins the Video watchlist

Added as the 5th Video watchlist tool — ByteDance's video generation model (accessed via Dreamina), from this snapshot forward.

• ●Seedance (vendor: ByteDance) enters the Video watchlist — attention-only (search interest + mentions), scored out of 60 SEARCH + 40 MENTIONS like the other watchlist tools.
• ●Watchlist, not index: Seedance is a closed ByteDance model with no public usage counter to measure fairly (HN + r/Seedance attention only).
• ●Applies from this snapshot forward; the registry now spans 39 tools (28 index + 11 watchlist).

Why · Seedance has real attention but no public counter — exactly the watchlist bar. It is tracked so its tier can be re-evaluated if a measurable usage signal appears.

Grok Build joins the Coding index

Added as the 15th Coding tool — xAI's open coding agent, joining from this snapshot forward.

• ●Grok Build (vendor: xAI) enters the Coding index as a full index tool — verified public counter (GitHub xai-org/grok-build repo stars).
• ●Mention signals come from HN + the r/grokbuild subreddit.
• ●Applies from this snapshot forward; earlier snapshots keep the prior cohort.
• ●Global percentile cohort now spans 26 tools (15 coding + 11 image); weights unchanged.

Why · xAI's grok-build open coding agent has a real, verifiable public counter (GitHub stars) and genuine attention, so it qualifies for the index the same way other open coding agents do.

Stable Diffusion and Qwen Image join the Image index

Added as the 10th and 11th Image tools — Stability AI's open-weight image generator and Alibaba's Qwen image model line, joining from this snapshot forward.

• ●Stable Diffusion (vendor: Stability AI) enters the Image index — verified public counter (HuggingFace SDXL model downloads) plus r/StableDiffusion post volume.
• ●Qwen Image (vendor: Alibaba) enters the Image index — verified public counters (HuggingFace Qwen-Image downloads + GitHub QwenLM/Qwen-Image repo).
• ●Applies from this snapshot forward; earlier snapshots keep the prior cohort.
• ●Global percentile cohort now spans 25 tools (14 coding + 11 image); weights unchanged.

Why · Both open-weight image model lines have real, verifiable public counters (HuggingFace downloads, GitHub) and genuine attention signals, so they qualify for the index the same way other open-weight image models do.

Muse joins the Image index

Added as the 9th Image tool — Meta's open-weight image model line, joining from this snapshot forward.

• ●Muse (vendor: Meta) enters the Image index as a full index tool — verified public counter (HuggingFace Muse-Glimmer-30B model downloads).
• ●Mention signals come from HN + the r/metaai subreddit (Muse has no subreddit of its own).
• ●Applies from this snapshot forward; earlier snapshots keep the prior cohort.
• ●Global percentile cohort now spans 23 tools (14 coding + 9 image); weights unchanged.

Why · Meta's Muse-Glimmer open-weight model line has a real, verifiable public counter (HuggingFace downloads) and genuine attention, so it qualifies for the index the same way other open-weight image models do.

MiniMax joins the Coding index

Added as the 14th Coding tool — MiniMax's open-weight coding & agentic model line, joining from this snapshot forward.

• ●MiniMax (vendor: MiniMax) enters the Coding index as a full index tool — verified public counters (HuggingFace MiniMax-M3 model downloads + GitHub MiniMax-M1 repo).
• ●Applies from this snapshot forward; earlier snapshots keep the prior cohort.
• ●Global percentile cohort now spans 22 tools (14 coding + 8 image); weights unchanged.

Why · MiniMax's M3/M1 line of open-weight coding & agentic models has real, verifiable public counters (HuggingFace + GitHub), so it qualifies for the index the same way other open-weight models do.

Z.ai GLM joins the Coding index

Added as the 13th Coding tool — Z.ai's open-weight coding model, joining from this snapshot forward.

• ●Z.ai GLM (vendor: Z.ai / Zhipu) enters the Coding index as a full index tool — verified public counters (HuggingFace model downloads + GitHub repo).
• ●Applies from this snapshot forward; earlier snapshots keep the prior cohort.
• ●Global percentile cohort now spans 21 tools (13 coding + 8 image); weights unchanged.

Why · Z.ai's GLM is an open-weight coding model with real, verifiable public counters (HuggingFace + GitHub), so it qualifies for the index the same way other open-weight models do.

Qwen Coder joins the Coding index

Added as the 12th Coding tool — Alibaba's open-weight coding model, joining from this snapshot forward.

• ●Qwen Coder (vendor: Alibaba) enters the Coding index as a full index tool — it has verified public counters (HuggingFace model downloads + GitHub repo), so it competes on Power like other open-weight models.
• ●Applies from this snapshot forward; earlier snapshots keep the prior cohort.
• ●Global percentile cohort now spans 20 tools (12 coding + 8 image); weights unchanged.

Why · Qwen Coder is Alibaba's open-weight coding model with real, verifiable public counters (HuggingFace + GitHub), so it qualifies for the index the same way open-weight image models already do.

Kimi Code CLI joins the Coding index

Added as the 11th Coding tool — Moonshot AI's open-source terminal coding agent, joining from this snapshot forward.

• ●Kimi Code CLI (vendor: Moonshot AI) enters the Coding index as a full index tool — it has verified public usage counters (npm package + GitHub repo), so it competes on Power like the other CLI agents.
• ●Applies from this snapshot forward; earlier snapshots keep the prior 18-tool cohort.
• ●Global percentile cohort now spans 19 tools (11 coding + 8 image); weights unchanged.

Why · Kimi Code CLI is Moonshot AI's open-source coding agent with real, verifiable public counters (npm + GitHub). It joins the same way Claude Code and Gemini CLI did — on its own collected signals, ranked inside the existing cohort.

Reddit joins the Mentions signal

Mentions is no longer Hacker News alone — Reddit community post volume is combined in, from this snapshot forward.

• ●Mentions = Hacker News story mentions + Reddit post volume over the trailing 14 days, counted per tool in its own subreddit (via the Arctic-Shift mirror — native Reddit JSON is OAuth-walled; each subreddit verified to exist).
• ●Applies from this snapshot forward; older snapshots keep HN-only mentions, scored under the source set active on their date.
• ●Weights unchanged (Size 30 · Growth 30 · Mentions 20 · Search 20 + momentum booster); watchlist scoring unchanged.

Why · Hacker News alone made Mentions the single most gameable component — one discourse surface, easy to spoof. Adding Reddit's ground-level community volume gives a second, independent surface, percentile-ranked together with HN, so Mentions is both broader and harder to game.

Index formula rebalanced + momentum booster

Changed how the Power Score weighs its components, and let current heat lift a tool ahead of its installed scale.

• ●Rebalanced the index weights: Size 45% → 30%, Growth 25% → 30%, Mentions 15% → 20%, Search interest 15% → 20%.
• ●Added a bounded momentum booster: a tool whose live heat (Growth + Mentions + Search) runs ahead of its size gains up to +12, so a genuinely-hot entrant can overtake a big-but-cold incumbent.
• ●Watchlist scoring unchanged (60 search + 40 mentions, never merged into the index).

Why · An external methodology review showed the 45% size weight made the top unreachable for heat-driven movers: no matter how hot a brand-new model got on HN and Google Trends, its (still-tiny) download count anchored it permanently below scale-heavy incumbents. Size is still the largest single component; the booster only lets real momentum crack the top.

Real-data public-activity index launches

Live Power rankings begin from daily collected public signals, with a ratified formula and a watchlist tier.

• ●Launched the real-data index: tool counts and scores now come from daily collected public signals, not a synthetic preview.
• ●Ratified formula 45/25/15/15 (Size / Growth / Mentions / Search interest), scored within a global percentile cohort.
• ●12 index tools + 6 watchlist tools across Coding and Image; watchlist tools are scored on attention only and never merged into the index.
• ●Daily snapshots collected 4×/day (00/06/12/18 UTC) from public sources only: npm, GitHub, HuggingFace, VS Code marketplace, Discord, Hacker News, Google Trends.