The AI industry has picked up a familiar playbook from the developer tools era: ship an API, write documentation, let developers build. This confuses access with distribution. An API grants you access to a capability but doesn’t help you with distribution.
After years of building embedded analytics at ThoughtSpot, I’ve come to the conclusion that for AI products with user-facing surfaces, an API alone won’t cut it. If you want developers to actually adopt your product, not just play with it, you also need to ship embeddable UI alongside your endpoints.