Adoption dailySeptember 30, 2026Web platform

Codex surges while vibe coding fades in developer attention

OpenAI Codex installs hit 3.4M/day, a 115× jump from last year. Meanwhile, vibe coding dropped from rank 7 to 16 as practical tools displace abstract concepts.

The numbers: Passkeys is today's fastest-rising trend: installs at 1.37× the four-week pace. Momentum across 1 signal: 1.37×. 6 of 21 trends are climbing and 1 are cooling.

Backfilled on October 7, 2026 using only data published by September 30, 2026.

Passkeys: 928k npm installs a day on a typical day last week, against 680k the four weeks before

Bars are single days, the line is the 7-day average, the shaded band is the last 7 days and the dashed line is the four-week typical day (median).

Data through npm 09/28, Wikipedia 09/29, HN 09/29. Source: npm downloads API.

OpenAI Codex jumped from rank 16 to 7 in daily activity, driven by 3.4M/day installs. This marks a 115× increase over the previous year, when usage stood at 30k/day. The metric captures a decisive move away from experimental prompts toward integrated, production-ready coding assistance within standard development environments.

Conversely, vibe coding fell from rank 7 to 16, signaling a cooling interest in the broad, prompt-centric approach. While AI agents maintain steady momentum at 1.17×, the specific cultural trend of vibe coding is losing traction. Developers are prioritizing tools that deliver verifiable code over the general concept of conversational programming.

This divergence highlights a maturing adoption curve. The rise of specific, high-volume tools like Codex indicates that developers are embedding AI directly into their workflows rather than treating it as a separate, experimental layer. The drop in vibe coding reflects a preference for reliability and integration over the novelty of natural language interfaces.

Watch next: Monitor whether passkey adoption at 928k/day continues to climb alongside coding tools, suggesting a broader integration of secure, seamless authentication into developer stacks.

Column drafted by qwen/qwen3.8-27b from the numbers below; every figure checked against them.

The numbers

On a typical day last week, npm installs of @simplewebauthn/browser reached 928k, 1.37× the 680k of a typical day in the four weeks before.

Next on the board: Small modular reactors at 1.33×, led by Wikipedia readers at 1.33× (595 on a typical day against 447).

Quiet adoption: Bun runtime installs run at 1.19× their four-week pace while attention sits at 0.9×. Developers are adding it faster than people are reading about it.

Cooling fastest: Robotaxis at 0.78×, with Wikipedia readers down to 195 on a typical day from 251. Part of that is a spike on Sep 8 in the weeks before.

The long view: OpenAI Codex installs over the last four weeks are 115× the same four weeks a year earlier (3.4M a day against 30k).

Trend pages: Passkeys Small modular reactors Starlink Robotaxis

Quiet adoption Broad rise One-day spike

6 of 21 trends are climbing; Passkeys leads at 1.37×

Momentum is a typical day (median) of the last 7 divided by a typical day of the 28 before, averaged across every signal with enough data. 1× means no change. Rings mark each signal.

Data through npm 09/28, Wikipedia 09/29, HN 09/29. Source: npm downloads API, Wikimedia pageviews, Hacker News search.

4 of 7 developer tools are being installed faster than they are being read about

Across: attention momentum (Wikipedia readers and Hacker News stories). Up: install momentum (npm). Both on log scales; the 1× lines split the corners.

Data through npm 09/28, Wikipedia 09/29, HN 09/29. Source: npm downloads API, Wikimedia pageviews, Hacker News search.

Small modular reactors draws the most Wikipedia readers against its own normal: 1.33× over the last week

Each cell is one day's readers divided by that trend's four-week typical day. Orange runs hot, dark runs cold.

Data through npm 09/28, Wikipedia 09/29, HN 09/29. Source: Wikimedia pageviews API, user agents only.

Every number on the board

All 22 trends, September 30, 2026. Per-day figures are a typical (median) day of the last week. * = base too small to count (under 1,000 installs, 100 readers or 1 story a day).

Passkeys	Web platform	1.37×	Climbing	928k	1.37×	85	1×*	0.4	1.2×*
Small modular reactors	Energy	1.33×	Climbing	–	–	595	1.33×	0.0	0×*
Starlink	Space	1.21×	Climbing	–	–	2,398	1.21×	0.9	2.7×*
WebGPU	Web platform	1.2×	Climbing	1.6M	1.19×	150	1.22×	0.9	1.26×*
AI agents	AI agents	1.17×	Climbing	678k	1.23×	1,189	1.12×	13	1.16×
AI API SDKs	AI agents	1.16×	Climbing	19M	1.16×	–	–	–	–
OpenAI Codex	AI coding	1.1×	Steady	3.7M	1.12×	41	1.16×*	4.7	1.09×
Solid-state batteries	Energy	1.1×	Steady	–	–	430	1.1×	0.0	0×*
Heat pumps	Energy	1.09×	Steady	–	–	520	1.09×	0.1	2×*
SpaceX Starship	Space	1.08×	Steady	–	–	1,475	1.08×	1.7	6.9×*
Smart glasses	Devices	1.06×	Steady	–	–	239	1.06×	0.9	1.71×*
Model Context Protocol	AI agents	1.05×	Steady	11M	1.18×	1,538	1.08×	6.4	0.91×
Bun runtime	Web platform	1.04×	Steady	725k	1.19×	225	0.9×	0.6	0.59×*
Local LLMs	AI agents	1.03×	Steady	167k	0.95×	760	1.11×	0.6	0.94×*
Gemini CLI	AI coding	1×	Steady	64k	1×	–	–	0.0	n/a*
Vibe coding	AI coding	1×	Steady	–	–	1,687	1.21×	1.0	0.82×
Claude Code	AI coding	0.97×	Steady	2.1M	0.86×	–	–	7.1	1.09×
Humanoid robots	Robots	0.94×	Steady	–	–	345	0.94×	0.7	0.87×*
Quantum computing	Devices	0.92×	Steady	–	–	1,879	1.07×	2.6	0.78×
eVTOL air taxis	Space	0.9×	Steady	–	–	185	0.9×	0.0	0×*
Robotaxis	Robots	0.78×	Cooling	–	–	195	0.78×	0.0	0×*
Vehicle-to-grid	Energy	n/a	Not enough data	–	–	58	0.92×*	0.0	0×*

Method and sources

Every trend gets up to three free, daily signals. Installs: npm registry downloads for the packages named on each trend page (developer adoption; it counts CI and mirrors too, so it measures direction, not people). Attention: English Wikipedia readers per day, human agents only, and Hacker News stories with the term in the title. For each signal we divide a typical day (the median) of the last 7 complete days by a typical day of the 28 days before. Medians keep one launch-day spike from carrying a whole week; both windows are whole weeks, so weekend dips sit equally in both. Momentum is the geometric mean of the signals that clear a minimum base. npm reports some days as zero for every package at once; we treat those as missing.

The column is drafted by a free language model from the day's computed facts only, and is published only if every number in it matches those facts; otherwise the computed paragraphs stand alone. Theme labels come from Jev (or its Cloudflare Clef fallback, as noted) choosing from a fixed list of ten.

Stages: Breakout 1.5× and up, Climbing 1.15×, Steady 0.87× to 1.15×, Cooling below. Raw data: /api/trends/2026-09-30.json.