> Detractors of AI are often accused of moving the goalpost, but I think your comment is guilty of the same. Before Claude Code, we had Cursor, Github Copilot, and more. Each of these war purportedly revolutionizing software engineering.

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If you make that argument that 'I don't believe in kinks or discontinuities in code release due to AI, because so many AI coding systems have come out incrementally since 2020', then OP does provide strong evidence for an AI acceleration - the smooth exponential!

Amongst people who use AI regularly, November 2025 is widely regarded as a watershed moment. Opus 4.5 was head and shoulders above anything that came before it. It marked the first time my previously AI-disliker friends begrudgingly came to accept that it may actually be useful.