Two AI reels landed in front of me this week. Different accounts, different continents, same move. Probably my own doing — I’ve been reading too much AI stuff lately, so the algorithm kantoi-ed me!

The first ends with: comment a word and I’ll send you the setup guide.

Big “Fact or Hype?” sticker across the top. Behind the guy’s head, a repository with 111,000-odd stars.

The second ends with: comment a word and I’ll send you the link.

Seventeen thousand likes. 6,330 comments. And a promise — switch your AI between any model with one click, and the memory follows along.

Both are selling something. Neither is selling what the reel says it is.

A single word, a bot, a free guide, a community, a subscription. The reel is the first step, not the product.

First one is a real repo. Also not the point.

It is. Open licence, genuinely useful, people are using it.

But read what it actually does. It is not a scraper. It is a switcher. It installs a pile of other people’s tools and puts one command in front of them. Video downloads, code search, social reads, forums, shopping sites.

All the hard parts belong to somebody else. It just glues them together nicely.

Which is why there is a sponsor in the frame. The README behind his head has a paid row in it, for a cloud-browser service that sells credits.

The free repository is the advertisement. The thing the sponsor sells is the product.

Second one is a real product. Also not the point.

Hosted AI agent. 97 dollars a month, after a three-day trial. The founder is a working engineer, and I have no reason to doubt a single line of the feature list — always on, reads your mail, watches your calendar, browses in its own cloud browser, and you talk to it from your phone.

The bit that got 6,330 comments is the least interesting part of it.

Switch model with one click and keep the memory? Increasingly table stakes for a decent multi-model setup. Wiring up two providers is one thing. Keeping useful memory working properly across them still takes work.

What you are actually buying is managed hosting in somebody else’s data centre, plus setup, maintenance, monitoring and support. Keeping the thing running reliably has value. Especially if you would rather use the bloody thing than babysit it.

Nothing wrong with that. Just don’t call it magic.

Macam magic, tapi bukan.

The funnel is the product

Comment a word. Get a DM. The DM hands you a free guide, which costs them nothing. The guide points at a community. The community sells the subscription.

That is the whole business. The reel is a lead magnet with a soundtrack.

Six thousand three hundred comments is not demand. It is six thousand three hundred people you can now send a payment link to.

Bangang ke kita ni semua? A bit, yes. That is how the algorithm learns.

Wah, so cynical, this fella. But I am not sneering. Half of them know their stuff. The free tier is often honestly free. The course might even be good.

Still a funnel.

Two questions before the DM lands

What does this do that my own setup cannot already do?

What do I have to hand over for it?

For the first: nothing I needed. My machine already reads pages, searches, pulls transcripts, and switches provider per task.

For the second: everything. An agent that reads your mail needs your mail. Its memory of how you work sits on their disk, not yours.

And that is the actual selling point, isn’t it. “All his memory and everything he knows about how I work comes with him.”

Comes with him wherever he goes. On somebody else’s server.

Fine for your inbox. Not fine for a document with a client’s name on it.

My rule is simple. If it would embarrass me in a screenshot, it does not go into an agent I don’t own.

So what did I do?

Nothing.

Watched both. Read the repository. Checked the price. Closed the tab.

Then went back to the one I already pay for, which is the electricity.

Because the expensive part is not the 97 dollars. It is the bit where you hand your working life to someone who was a stranger to you last month.

The stars are probably real. The product is probably fine.

I am keeping my own filing cabinet.

P/S: I have no problem with people making a living out of this. I have a problem with being farmed. Repeatedly.