> I think the even more unfortunate truth is that value adds were never a good solution to begin with.

This is the money quote for me - charging for a different thing than the one that brings the value is unsustainable, and AI is accelerating that realization.

Unfortunately, without free distribution, Tailwind would never gain anywhere close to its current mindshare, so there just might not be an opening there (save for a "this year is a year of Linux on desktop" dream of bots and pnpm install paying with micropayments for each download).