From Framework Fatigue to Ecosystem Fatigue

The old 'JavaScript framework every week' joke has evolved into something worse: AI has dramatically lowered the cost of shipping new tools, memory systems, agent runtimes, and SaaS products, but users still bear the full cost of evaluating, integrating, and eventually escaping them. The author argues this 'ecosystem fatigue' is more dangerous than framework fatigue because today's tools demand trust at a deeper level — notes, workflows, long-term state — not just developer tooling. The real test for any new tool isn't the import button but the exit path, and local-first software without data portability is just vendor lock-in wearing a different label. AI lowering creation costs has widened the gap between author risk and user risk, and that asymmetry is where the fatigue originates.