A reference that doesn't admit its age is a lie with a nice font.
Every edition records what changed: elements discovered, tools succeeding tools, categories collapsing into each other. The table's position grid never reflows — only its occupants change.
v2026.Q3r7 — Analytics, and an honest privacy page to match
Google Analytics 4 now runs on every page. It is one async script loaded after render, with no ad pixels, no session recording, and no data sharing — but it is a tracker, and this site had been telling readers it ran none. The privacy page was rewritten in the same release to say exactly what is collected, how to block it, and that nothing on the site behaves differently when you do. A reference that hides its own instrumentation has the same problem as one that hides the graveyard.
v2026.Q3r6 — All 58 elements go deep
Every element on the table now carries a full dossier: a ranked top five with vendor-verified pricing and dated evidence, a comparison matrix, decision rules, and the complete field — 1,150 tools tracked across 58 categories, including every one we found dead, renamed, acquired, or sunsetting. A reference that hides the graveyard isn't one. Each dossier ships as open data at /e/<symbol>.json alongside the page. Also in this release: a central referral config so any future affiliate link is declared in exactly one place and disclosed on the page (rankings are written first and never touched by it — the charter §4), and a deep SEO/AEO pass — entity-bearing headings with as-of dates on every dossier section, real table semantics with captions, editorial outbound links that follow rather than nofollow, and price bands that finally say what they mean in dollars.
v2026.Q3r5 — Coding Agent goes deep: the first top-5 dossier
Element 5, Coding Agent (Ca), becomes the first element with a full dossier: the top 5 ranked with dated evidence — Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode — an eight-tool comparison matrix, five decision rules, and the complete field: thirty more tools including the dead, the renamed, and the sunsetting, because a reference that hides the graveyard isn't one. The tile now lists five holders (Codex and OpenCode seated alongside the incumbents), and the dossier ships as open data at e/ca.json. One element per release was the plan; the whole table shipped instead — see the entry above.
v2026.Q3r4 — Two seats change holders, and a number gets honest
The integrity-and-shutdown rule fired twice this quarter. Video (Vi): OpenAI discontinued the Sora app in April 2026 — Sora leaves the tile; Seedance takes the seat beside Veo, Runway, and Kling. Compliance (Cm): Delve was removed from the YC directory over evidence-fabrication claims — it leaves the tile immediately; compliance is the one category where a vendor's integrity failure becomes your risk. AI SDR (Sd) drops named-vendor phrasing for the cautionary category it is. And the headline count is corrected from 30,000 to the verified 47,000+ listed AI tools — a reference that rounds down its own evidence isn't one. Design: guide pages gain verdict modules, element pages show their holders up front, and the dense grid's smallest type is raised to the 10px floor the last audit promised.
v2026.Q3r3 — The table learns to answer back
The site's largest expansion since launch, in one release: the stack builder (five questions → your personal element stack, no email required), twenty-four verdict-first field guides, the independence charter, stack audits, and a full open-data surface — dated edition snapshots, markdown twins of every element page, a print poster, and a read-only MCP server so agents can query the taxonomy directly. Every element page now carries a last-verified date.
The table takes its true form — 58 seats, hydrogen through cerium
A fortunate accident of arithmetic: 58 elements is exactly hydrogen through cerium, so the table now sits on the classical coordinates — two lone seats in period 1, the twin towers with the top-middle gap, full eighteen-column periods 4 and 5, and a detached ✻ row where the heaviest elements sit apart. Fittingly, those are Taste (57) and Founder Health (58) — the rare earths of the AI-led company — with both undiscovered seats (59–60) reserved beside them. The reading key now lives in the classic top-middle gap, where chemistry wall charts have always put it.
v2026.Q3 — First edition. The table is live.
Fifty-eight elements across twelve groups, twenty-eight marked essential. Founding editorial rules take effect: elements are jobs, not brands; no element's position can be bought; every claim is dated; the table is bounded — a new element must earn its place.
Collapse watch: five category mergers in progress
Recorded at press time: vibe builders absorbing deploy (Vb→Dp), copywriting collapsing into frontier models (→Fm), agent frameworks converging with workflow automation via MCP (Ag↔Wf), enrichment expanding into AI SDR and CRM (En→Sd, Cr), and observability merging with compliance (Ev↔Cm). If a merger completes, the junior element retires — that's what the dashed tiles are for.
Group XI expanded: AI-Act Readiness (Ai) seated as element 49
The EU moved high-risk obligations toward December 2027, but transparency and literacy duties keep landing through 2026. Regulatory confusion is itself a job-to-be-done; the element is seated as optional, essential for anyone selling into the EU.
Human elements ruled load-bearing
Taste (Ts) and Founder Health (Fh) seated as essential over objections that they are "not tools." The data overruled the objection: 88% of heavy AI users report rising burnout, and every other element got cheaper while taste got scarcer. A stack that omits the human elements fails in production.
Two undiscovered elements — dashed tiles reserved
One expected in Group III (Agents & Automation) and one in Group XI (Trust & Compliance). Predictions are sealed in the editorial log and will be published with the edition that seats them.