I have a growing suspicion: a lot of AI products are not really products.

They are features with a logo.

For a while, that was enough. Wrap a model with a clean UI, pick one use case, and you have something sellable:

• meeting minutes
• PRD to tickets
• web summaries
• CRM note cleanup
• email drafting
• action-item extraction
• turning messy notes into something readable

Useful? Yes.
Durable? I’m less sure.

Because once the bigger systems get better, these tools start collapsing into skills.

That is what I’m seeing in my own workflow.

Things I once needed separate apps for now feel like capabilities inside Codex, Claude, or OpenClaw. I don’t switch products as much. I stay in one environment and call the skill I need.

That changes the game.

If your entire product is basically “LLM + prompt + thin interface,” you’re in danger. The larger systems are absorbing that layer fast.

What seems to be growing instead is the value of AI skills:

• reusable
• composable
• closer to the actual workflow
• easier to call when needed

That doesn’t mean every standalone AI tool dies. Some will still win on trust, integrations, workflow depth, or enterprise reliability.

But the weak middle looks shaky.

My current bet: the future is not 50 separate AI apps open in 50 tabs.

It is fewer systems, more built-in skills, and much less context switching.

A lot of “AI products” are on a timer. The best ones will turn into platforms — or get absorbed by them.