Evidence / Jul 10, 2025
Experienced developers were slower with AI and did not notice
A randomised trial of 16 open-source developers found AI tools added time despite predictions of speed-up.
The long view / Historical research
Good tools have a past.
So do bad habits.
Explore the launches, shifts and research behind the software we use. Historical dates belong to the record—not to this website.
106 records
Evidence / Jul 1, 2025
A widely quoted 95% AI failure figure rests on 52 interviews
MIT NANDA's report is a preliminary, interview-based study; its headline figure travelled further than its method.
Platform change / May 26, 2025
A browser maker paused Arc's features to build something else
The Browser Company's letter to Arc members states the browser gets only security updates while it builds Dia instead.
Platform change / May 22, 2025
Mozilla gave Pocket users four months to export before deletion
Mozilla's own posts date Pocket's closure and export window, showing what a well-documented shutdown still requires.
Tool record / May 16, 2025
OpenAI's Codex still asks a person to check the code it writes
OpenAI's May 2025 announcement sandboxes each task but states that manual review before integration remains essential.
Evidence / May 1, 2025
Danish data found wide chatbot use but no pay effect yet
Linked survey and register data rule out earnings or hours effects larger than 2%, two years after ChatGPT.
Platform change / Feb 28, 2025
Skype's twenty-year run ended inside Microsoft Teams
Microsoft's announcement and support page date Skype's retirement and what migrating to Teams Free does not carry over.
Platform change / Feb 26, 2025
Microsoft says EU customer data now stays within the EU
A February 2025 announcement completed a boundary keeping core cloud data and support data inside the EU and EFTA.
Tool record / Feb 24, 2025
Claude Code asks permission before it changes files or runs commands
Anthropic's announcement and current documentation describe a terminal coding agent launched as a research preview in February 2025 that asks before acting.
Tool record / Jan 22, 2025
Zapier's agents describe monitoring, not approving, each action
Zapier's own announcements for Central and Agents describe autonomous action across connected apps, with review that checks activity after the fact.
Pricing & economics / Jan 15, 2025
Google folded Gemini into Workspace base plans
A 2025 announcement bundled Gemini into Workspace plans, cutting one combined price while raising the base rate by $2.
Tool record / Dec 19, 2024
Kdenlive 24.12 made archive and subtitle work more explicit
Kdenlive’s December 2024 release added ASS subtitle support while refining project management and archiving—two distinct jobs that video editors should not confuse.
Pricing & economics / Dec 18, 2024
GitHub made Copilot free with monthly limits
GitHub's December 2024 free tier opened Copilot to any account, capped at 2,000 completions and 50 chat messages a month.
Tool record / Nov 19, 2024
FreeCAD 1.0 made model stability part of the release promise
FreeCAD’s 2024 release explains why its community waited for a 1.0 label: a topological-naming mitigation and a built-in assembly workbench, not a claim of perfection.
Pricing & economics / Oct 16, 2024
A court vacated the FTC's click-to-cancel rule
The FTC's 2024 rule required easy cancellation, but an appeals court vacated it in 2025 over a procedural failure.
Evidence / Oct 16, 2024
Staggered Copilot rollouts helped junior developers most
Field experiments at three companies and a Google trial both measured real coding work, with different designs.
Tool record / Sep 16, 2024
Replit's agent hands a non-developer a real app to maintain
Replit's own announcement and documentation describe an agent that builds and publishes an app, with checkpoints, not code review, as the safety net.
Tool record / Sep 16, 2024
Copilot in Excel reached general availability without a table rule
Microsoft's Wave 2 announcement states Copilot in Excel reached general availability and dropped its table-only limit on 16 September 2024.
Pricing & economics / Sep 1, 2024
Canva tripled Teams pricing, then reversed part of it
Canva's September 2024 move to per-seat Teams pricing drew backlash, and an October pricing promise restored some rates.
Tool record / Aug 9, 2024
Zotero 7 moved citation work closer to the source file
Zotero’s August 2024 announcement documented a redesigned research manager with EPUB and webpage annotation, alongside a plugin migration requirement.
Tool record / Jul 1, 2024
Joplin 3.0 treated deletion and mobile plugins as note-system design
Joplin’s July 2024 release added a trash folder, multi-factor authentication, a multi-column list and beta mobile plugins—features that change how a note archive is governed.
Tool record / Jun 10, 2024
Apple split Writing Tools between a device and an audited cloud
Apple's announcement and its technical blog describe how Writing Tools splits processing between a device and an audited private cloud.
Tool record / Jun 10, 2024
Apple split its AI features between the device and its own cloud
Apple's 2024 announcement explains what runs on the phone, what leaves it, and which hardware the split actually requires.
Platform change / Jun 6, 2024
Adobe clarified its terms after an AI training scare
After a February 2024 terms update alarmed users, Adobe posted June 2024 clarifications on generative AI and content access.
Platform change / May 20, 2024
Windows Recall's always-on capture was reworked before release
Continuous screenshot search shipped as an opt-in feature after May 2024's design drew security criticism.
Platform change / May 14, 2024
Google put a generated summary above search results in 2024
Google's own announcements record AI Overviews' May 2024 rollout, the errors that followed, and the fixes the company says it made.
Platform change / Apr 9, 2024
ChatGPT plugins lasted about a year before GPTs replaced them
OpenAI's GPTs announcement and Zapier's own sunset notice date the plugin wind-down and what builders had to migrate.
Tool record / Mar 12, 2024
Devin's 2024 launch paired a demo with a vendor-run benchmark
Cognition's own announcement and technical report show what the SWE-bench score measured and how much of the test set was actually run.
Platform change / Dec 18, 2023
A record design-tool acquisition ended under regulatory review
Adobe and Figma's statements and the UK regulator's case record show why the 2022 merger agreement was terminated in 2023.
Platform change / Oct 12, 2023
An acquisition folded async video into Atlassian's suite
Atlassian's 2023 announcement said Loom would stay standalone while feeding video into Jira and other tools.
Tool record / Oct 11, 2023
v0 and Lovable let a prototype skip straight to production
Both platforms' current documentation describe code review as an available choice, not a required gate, between a generated app and a live one.
Platform change / Sep 28, 2023
Jamboard's shutdown named three whiteboard apps as landing spots
Google's wind-down post and support page date Jamboard's staged retirement and the partners it pointed users toward.
Evidence / Sep 21, 2023
BCG consultants gained inside AI's edge, lost outside it
A 758-consultant field experiment shows performance gains and losses depend on task type, not effort.
Platform change / Aug 31, 2023
Microsoft split Teams pricing from Office in the EU
Facing an EU competition inquiry, Microsoft's 2023 announcement offered Microsoft 365 suites without Teams at a lower price.
Tool record / Aug 22, 2023
Python in Excel runs your code in Microsoft's cloud, not yours
Microsoft's announcement states Python calculations run in an isolated Azure container, not the user's device, changing what sharing a workbook means.
Workflow / Aug 15, 2023
PARA sorts by commitment, not by subject
Forte's own description and a 2023 standalone edition define the four categories; retrieval within them is left unsolved.
Platform change / Aug 11, 2023
Zoom's terms now rule out training AI on your meetings
The terms of service effective 11 August 2023 exclude meeting content from AI training, showing what a data-use clause should say.
Pricing & economics / Jul 18, 2023
Microsoft priced its Copilot add-on at $30 a seat
A 2023 announcement set Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30 a user monthly, ahead of an eligibility list that has since grown far wider.
Evidence / Jul 13, 2023
ChatGPT cut writing task time by 40% in a controlled trial
A preregistered experiment measured time and quality on real writing tasks, not long-run job performance.
Tool record / Jul 12, 2023
NotebookLM answers only from the sources it is given
Google's NotebookLM announcements describe source-grounded answering with citations, and the accuracy limits the company admits itself.
Evidence / May 9, 2023
Microsoft's Work Trend Index measures opinion, not AI's effect
A 31,000-worker survey documents strain and appetite for AI; it is not a measured productivity result.
Pricing & economics / Apr 28, 2023
A new owner raised Evernote's subscription price
After Bending Spoons agreed to acquire Evernote, a 2023 post raised subscription prices for the first time in nearly seven years.
Evidence / Apr 1, 2023
Generative AI aid raised novice support agents' output most
A staggered workplace rollout measured resolved chats per hour, with gains concentrated among newer agents.
Tool record / Mar 16, 2023
Microsoft pitched a copilot grounded in your own mail and files
Microsoft's March 2023 announcement explains what grounding in the Microsoft Graph means and what an admin sets up first.
Tool record / Mar 14, 2023
Google renamed its Workspace assistant twice in a year
Three announcements across a year show what each release added and why a renamed product needs rechecking against what you bought.
Tool record / Feb 22, 2023
Notion charged for writing help built into the same page
Notion's 2023 launch priced an AI add-on per seat, and its own guide lists why an assistant's output still needs checking.
Evidence / Feb 13, 2023
GitHub Copilot finished one coding task faster, once
A 95-developer experiment timed one task; a 2025 randomised trial found the opposite in a different setting.
Pricing & economics / Feb 1, 2023
OpenAI priced ChatGPT Plus at $20 a month
OpenAI's 1 February 2023 announcement set ChatGPT Plus at $20 a month, a price that has outlived its place in the lineup.
Tool record / Dec 14, 2022
A read-later app is built to feed your notes, not replace them
Readwise's 2022 public-beta post and documentation describe a reader whose highlights are meant to leave the app.
Platform change / Nov 16, 2022
Evernote's new owner raised prices five months after the deal
Evernote's own posts date the Bending Spoons acquisition and the pricing update after it, showing what an owner change means.
Pricing & economics / Jul 19, 2022
Slack traded a message cap for a 90-day window
A 2022 change replaced Slack's free-plan message ceiling with a rolling 90-day history limit that still applies today.
Platform change / Feb 22, 2022
Make's own retrospective dates the Integromat rebrand to February 2022
Make's year-in-review, not the original announcement which is no longer live, is the surviving primary source for the 22 February 2022 rebrand date.
Platform change / Feb 8, 2022
Google's default 2SV rollout cut account takeovers by half
A February 2022 report on Google's auto-enrolment drive shows why a security default outperforms advice alone.
Tool record / Jun 29, 2021
GitHub Copilot moved suggestions into the editor, not a chat window
GitHub's 2021 preview and 2022 pricing show what an AI pair programmer promised, and what its own docs say it still does not know.
Platform change / Nov 9, 2020
An FTC order found Zoom overstated its meeting encryption
The 2020 settlement records what Zoom claimed about encryption and what a security programme now requires.
Workflow / Nov 1, 2020
The 2020 Scrum Guide got shorter by removing rules
The guide's own revision history shows subtraction, not addition, while leaving estimation and metrics undefined.
Tool record / Oct 29, 2020
A launcher's extension store is where its privacy claim is tested
Raycast's own documentation dates its 2020 public beta and sets out how its extension store screens for privacy and security.
Platform change / Sep 10, 2020
IFTTT cut unlimited free automations down to three, then two
A 2020 report on IFTTT's Pro launch and today's living plans page show how a free tier's terms can tighten more than once.
Workflow / Aug 5, 2020
LibreOffice 7.0 treated document compatibility as a productivity feature
The Document Foundation’s 2020 release announcement links ODF 1.3, graphics performance and Microsoft-format compatibility without claiming that file exchange became frictionless.
Platform change / May 6, 2020
An acquired to-do app outlived its purchase by five years
Microsoft's 2015 acquisition post and its lifecycle record bracket Wunderlist's life and what buying a tool actually promises.
Tool record / Jul 30, 2019
Blender 2.80 made a long-running tool feel like a new workspace
The Blender Foundation’s 2019 release materials document a redesigned interface, a real-time renderer and an explicitly breaking API—useful evidence that a friendlier workflow can still impose migration work.
Platform change / Mar 6, 2019
A whiteboard renamed itself a year before remote work needed it
Miro's 2019 rebrand post explains why RealtimeBoard changed its name, months before remote work made whiteboards common.
Platform change / Sep 12, 2018
Google folded Inbox's best features into Gmail, then closed it
Google's own consumer and admin posts date the wind-down and show what 'merged into Gmail' actually meant.
Tool record / Mar 1, 2018
Notion 2.0 asked users to build their own filing cabinet
Notion's own philosophy page and a March 2018 Product Hunt record date the block-based relaunch.
Workflow / Jan 5, 2016
Deep Work names a real cost but not the one it measures
The publisher dates the book to January 2016; interruption research supports a narrower, more subjective cost than the book claims.
Tool record / Feb 25, 2015
Airtable made a database behave like a spreadsheet
A February 2015 TechCrunch report and Airtable's own docs show the pitch and where the spreadsheet analogy breaks.
Workflow / Oct 25, 2014
CommonMark gave an ambiguous format a strict specification
CommonMark's own history and its dated specification versions show why an ambiguous format needed a strict, testable grammar.
Workflow / Aug 18, 2013
Migration, not the notebook, is what makes it work
The method's own FAQ defines migration as the deliberate friction that decides what is worth keeping on the list.
Tool record / Aug 14, 2013
Slack's 2013 preview outgrew its own waiting list
A 2013 VentureBeat report and Slack's 2019 prospectus date the preview and the launch that followed it.
Platform change / Mar 13, 2013
Google Reader's 2013 shutdown made export formats matter
Google's own posts date the closure and the Takeout export, showing what depending on a free reader costs when it ends.
Tool record / Jun 20, 2012
Zapier let non-developers connect apps with a Zap
A 2012 local report and Zapier's own help pages date the launch and describe the Zap mechanism.
Tool record / Nov 1, 2011
Asana made task ownership visible across a team
A 2020 SEC filing and a 2012 TechCrunch report date Asana's founding and its November 2011 public launch.
Tool record / Sep 1, 2011
Trello turned kanban boards into a consumer product
Trello's own history page and guide date the 2011 launch and show what a board tracks and what it leaves out.
Tool record / Jun 28, 2011
Office 365 turned owning Office into a monthly subscription
Microsoft's 2011 launch announcement records Office 365's price range and its shift from owning software to a recurring subscription.
Evidence / Apr 1, 2008
Interrupted office workers finished faster but more stressed
A lab study of 48 people found interruptions sped work up while raising stress, not the reverse.
Workflow / Dec 1, 2006
ISO 26300 made office documents an open specification
ISO and OASIS records describe what ISO/IEC 26300 defines and how an open schema differs from a guarantee against lock-in.
Tool record / Oct 11, 2006
Google Docs put word processing and live editing in a browser
Google's 2006 announcement and the earlier Writely acquisition post show what real-time browser editing added, and what it assumed about ownership.
Workflow / Dec 17, 2004
Markdown was designed to be readable before it is converted
The original 2004 Markdown pages state a plain-text readability goal that a decade of divergent implementations would later test.
Tool record / Apr 1, 2004
Gmail's 2004 launch made email storage abundant
Google's 2004 announcement and current help pages show what a 1GB inbox promised and what searching instead of filing costs later.
Workflow / Feb 11, 2001
Seventeen people wrote four values, not a toolset
The manifesto and its principles name no tool, ceremony or metric that software vendors later built around its name.
Workflow / Jan 4, 2001
GTD names five verbs, not a single trick
The method's own materials define capture, clarify, organize, reflect and engage; no independent study of it was found.
Tool record / Method record
Evernote built a business on remembering for you
Evernote's current pages and a 2022 acquisition report date the 2008 shift and show what capture-everything costs later.
Tool record / Method record
Dropbox turned file syncing into a one-folder habit
Dropbox's about page, a 2018 SEC filing and a 2009 report date the 2007 founding and 2008 public debut.
Tool record / Method record
IFTTT reduced automation to one trigger, one action
IFTTT's own pages date its 2011 launch and show what a single trigger and action can and cannot do.
Platform change / Method record
OpenAI let other services plug into ChatGPT, then moved on
OpenAI's own plugin repositories confirm the feature was superseded by GPTs, a caution about building on a rented platform.
Tool record / Method record
Zoom bundled meeting summaries into paid plans, not a new fee
Zoom's own guide and support pages describe what AI Companion generates and does with meeting content, without a hands-on test.
Tool record / Method record
Canva bundled a dozen AI tools under a single Magic Studio name
Canva's own announcement lists what Magic Studio bundled, and its page today shows how far the branding has already moved on.
Tool record / Method record
Adobe built its generative model on licensed and public images
Adobe's own product and legal pages describe what Firefly trains on and where its commercial-use promise stops.
Tool record / Method record
A Teams meeting recap is generated, not a verified record
Microsoft's own documentation lists what Intelligent Recap generates and from what, and which licence it requires.
Tool record / Method record
Cursor's agent edits first and asks for review afterwards
Cursor's own documentation describes an agent that edits files and runs commands, with checkpoints for recovery rather than approval before action.
Tool record / Method record
n8n's licence permits internal use, not reselling the tool
n8n's own Sustainable Use License permits internal and personal use of the self-hosted source, and restricts turning it into a paid service.
Tool record / Method record
Copilot Studio's governance sits in an admin centre, not the builder
Microsoft's documentation for Copilot Studio describes low-code agent building and governance controls kept in a separate admin centre.
Tool record / Method record
Obsidian keeps notes as files you could open without it
Obsidian's own site and documentation describe a plain-file note system and what local-first still costs in convenience.
Workflow / Method record
The pomodoro is a records system with a timer attached
Cirillo's own materials frame the 25-minute interval as one part of an estimation and tracking system, not the whole method.
Workflow / Method record
Visualising work is easy; limiting it is the hard part
The Kanban Guide traces itself to a 2010 book, but most board software skips the work-in-progress limit it names as essential.
Platform change / Method record
Slack's privacy principles spell out consent for AI training
Slack's privacy-principles page requires opt-in consent before generative AI training and offers an opt-out from global models.
Platform change / Method record
A two-party-consent law applies to a bot as much as a human
California's recording statute and the federal wiretap act show why a meeting assistant needs a consent policy, not just a toggle.
Platform change / Method record
Google says Workspace prompts are not used to train Gemini
Google's privacy documentation separates prompt handling from training, and leaves retention length to admin settings.
Evidence / Method record
A SOC 2 report is an opinion, not a pass or fail badge
The AICPA's own reporting on rushed SOC engagements shows why a compliance badge needs reading, not just trusting.
Workflow / Method record
Staff already use AI tools; a policy has to assume that
UK government and NCSC guidance describe the actual risks of employee AI use and what a written policy needs to cover.
Tool record / Method record
A scheduling link shifts control of a calendar to the invitee
Calendly's own materials date the company to 2013 and describe how a scheduling link reads and writes a calendar.
Tool record / Method record
Linear's method trades detailed specs for speed and trust
Linear's own documentation sets out an opinionated method: write issues directly, skip user stories, then execute fast.
Tool record / Method record
A speed-focused mail client is now folded into Grammarly's suite
Superhuman's own materials date its mail client to 2014 and record its 2025 consolidation into a Grammarly-owned brand.
Tool record / Method record
Todoist adds views to one task model instead of replacing it
Todoist's documentation describes list, board and calendar views on one task model, with clear limits on export and backup.
Workflow / Method record
Google's own OKR guide cites its own unverified research
The framework's promoters disagree on the year Google adopted it and offer no named study for its claimed effect on performance.
Workflow / Method record
The president's name attached itself after the fact
FranklinCovey's own page on the urgent/important distinction, dated to 1989, never mentions Eisenhower at all.
No records match. Try a wider period or another topic.
Retrospective draft editions prepared Sep 16, 2026 and Sep 19, 2026. Existing source records are preserved, not silently re-verified. Imagery is credited separately and may show a later interface.