The expansion of models from 63 to 668 on OpenRouter between early 2024 and late 2025 is a staggering 960% increase, a clear market trend.
However, to claim that tracking this growth "informs" or drives it seems to assign too much causal weight to observation alone.
It's like saying my kakeibo budget book causes my grocery bill to go up or down; it simply records the yen spent, allowing for comparison, perhaps revealing a 15% increase in vegetable prices this month.
The tracking provides a numerical score for the market's activity, a reflection, not an engine of change.
It's a useful ratio of progress, but not the reason for the progress itself.