The market right now

This page goes stale quickly — that’s the point. Use it as a snapshot of how to think about the landscape, not as eternal truth.

What’s relatively stable (good to build on)

LLMs as APIs — multiple strong providers, competition keeps quality up and prices moving (usually down for a given capability).
Tool calling — models invoking structured functions is a durable pattern for agents.
Embeddings + vector search — standard approach for “long-term memory” and RAG; tooling is mature.
IDE agents — coding assistants and repo-aware agents are mainstream; expect churn in which product leads, not in the category.

Subscription terms for consumer plans used as API substitutes — policies shift; don’t architect only around one hack.
Model names — leaders rotate; design around capabilities (reasoning depth, context length, tool reliability) and route accordingly.
Orchestration frameworks — lots of innovation; pick one that solves your visibility and governance needs (explicit roles, budgets, logs).

Prefer multi-provider access for anything serious (e.g. OpenRouter-style aggregation or direct multi-vendor with fallbacks).
Keep local or small models in the loop for volume work — summaries, routing, classification.
Treat everything public as a press release — verify pricing and limits on the vendor’s site the week you ship.