Guides / introductory
How to read a listing
What the fields mean, why verifiedAt is load-bearing, and how to treat an editorial take.
Every tool page is an editorial document, not a spec sheet and not a review score. Read it in this order.
1. The take
The take is the reason the page exists. It should tell you what the product actually is in a factory, what it is not, and where we are guessing. If the take and the marketing tagline agree too cleanly, we did a bad job.
Trevize listings disclose a conflict of interest in the take and on methodology. That disclosure is not a discount. It is a warning to read harder.
2. verifiedAt
verifiedAt is the date we last checked primary sources for the structured fields: URLs, license, model independence, deployment, pricing model, and the factual sentences in strengths and limitations. It is printed on every listing.
It is not a freshness badge for the product. Cursor can ship a new cloud-agent feature the next morning. It is a freshness badge for our claims. If the date is stale, treat pricing and plan names as suspect first.
3. Layers
Layers are a taxonomy, not a compliment. A tool can be listed under orchestration because it has a scheduler, not because it is good at scheduling. Click through to the layer pages to see neighbors.
If a vendor claims every layer, ask which surfaces are generally available and which are enterprise, beta, or a slide. We try to encode that in limitations.
4. Model independence
- Locked means the product is built around one model family. Hosting Claude on Bedrock does not make Claude Code multi-model.
- Multi-model means you can choose among providers or models as a supported feature.
- Router means the product will pick (or rule-pick) a model per task as a first-class feature, not just a “Auto” dropdown.
BYOK is not the same as multi-model. A key you can attach in an IDE may not be available to unattended cloud agents. When we know that split, it is in the take.
5. Deployment and open source
Cloud, self-hosted, and BYOC describe where the factory runtime can live, not where the marketing site is hosted. A local CLI on your laptop is self-hosted execution. It is not a self-hosted control plane.
openSource: true means a substantial client or runtime is publicly licensed. It does not mean the cloud orchestration layer is open. Warp is the seed example of that split. Read the license field.
6. Production evidence
If this field is empty, we did not find a number we were willing to repeat. If it is present, read the caveats. Vendor homepage statistics, founder tweets, and “trusted by” rows are not production evidence. A named customer’s own engineering blog, with a date and a method, is.
We do not invent figures to fill the box.
7. Pricing model
The structured field is a shape (free, usage, seat, enterprise, mixed), not a price list. Dollar amounts in the prose were correct on verifiedAt and will rot. Follow the vendor URL.
After you read
If a field is wrong, open a GitHub issue. Do not expect a vendor to edit the page. Agents may propose a change; a human publishes it. There is no pay-to-play path and no listing claim form.