Changelog

A public record of meaningful changes to the Power index — formula and weight changes, new categories, source updates and methodology corrections, logged with dates.

Why this exists

Every snapshot on ToolTicker was scored under the Power Model active on its date. This log is the authoritative record of when the model changed — so a historical score is never mistaken for today’s methodology, and a sudden move on a given day can be traced back to the change that caused it.

Aug 18, 2026Index addition

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.

Aug 18, 2026Source update

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.

Aug 17, 2026Power Model v1.1

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.

Aug 14, 2026Power Model v1.0

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.