The latest articles on DEV Community by Sergei Arbo (@sergei_arbo_0f42ee01a7399). https://dev.to/sergei_arbo_0f42ee01a7399 https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4044420%2F41dab0b3-b352-4eae-b202-7176094efd24.png https://dev.to/sergei_arbo_0f42ee01a7399 en Sergei Arbo Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:00:28 +0000 https://dev.to/sergei_arbo_0f42ee01a7399/i-built-a-living-registry-that-tracks-which-ai-tools-are-actually-still-alive-2n97 https://dev.to/sergei_arbo_0f42ee01a7399/i-built-a-living-registry-that-tracks-which-ai-tools-are-actually-still-alive-2n97 <p>Over the past year I kept hitting the same wall. You find a good AI or SaaS tool, you recommend it to your team or build it into your product, and a few months later it's gone: shut down, acqui-hired, tripled its price, or just quietly got worse. The "best AI tools" listicle you found it on was written once, never updated, half the links already dead.</p> <p>There was no good place to answer a simple question: is this tool actually still alive and worth it right now?</p> <p>So I built one. It's called Verdict: <a href="https://verdict.tools" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://verdict.tools</a></p> <h2> What it does </h2> <p>Every tool gets a status backed by a date and a source, not vibes:<br> alive, price-hiked, degrading, sunset-announced, or dead. A status you can't verify is worthless, so every claim links to where it came from and when it was last checked.</p> <h2> The parts I actually care about (as a dev) </h2> <p>Reachability is re-checked twice a day, from two separate servers. I run the checkers on two different VPS boxes so a single network blip can't lie. Right now 211 of 218 tracked tools were re-verified in the last 24 hours, and the "verified" date you see is that real timestamp.</p> <p>A "dead" verdict is only ever set by a human. This one matters. An automated check seeing a site return 503 for an hour does not mean the product died, so the automated checks only feed a review queue and a person makes the actual call. No tool gets a tombstone from a flaky ping.</p> <p>No visitor IPs are stored. Analytics are first-party and log no IPs at all.</p> <p>It's built to be machine-readable and citable by AI answer engines: a public JSON status API, JSON-LD on every page, an RSS feed of status changes, an llms.txt, and embeddable status badges that auto-recolor if a tool's status changes (so a vendor can't slap a "verified alive" badge on a dead product).</p> <h2> The fun part: the Mortality Report </h2> <p>The piece I had the most fun with is a dated census of AI and SaaS tools that have actually shut down, with the patterns behind why. For the dead ones there are migration guides (what to do with your data, plus live alternatives), and for tools that are alive but showing dated warning signs there are "decline signal" pages.</p> <p>It tracks a bit over 200 tools across AI writing, video, voice, meeting notes, sales outreach, marketing automation, and support, with a full Russian edition too.</p> <h2> It's early, and I'd love feedback </h2> <p>I just finished the build, so this is me putting it out there. If you've ever been burned by a tool disappearing on you: would you check something like this before picking one? What's missing? What should I add?</p> <p>It's at <a href="https://verdict.tools" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://verdict.tools</a>. Tear it apart.</p> ai saas webdev showdev