A new AI model rarely appears out of nowhere. Before the announcement, it has to be set up, tested and switched on, and traces of that work often show up in public. trckr watches the places where those traces appear, around the clock, so you hear about a model as soon as it's out, and sometimes sooner.
Where trckr looks
First, the labs' own systems. Labs that let developers use their models through an API: How developers plug a model into their own apps and pay per use. A model that's "in the API" can be used by programmers, even if it isn't in a chat app yet. keep a list of the models on offer. A new name often appears there before the blog post goes up.
Hugging Face: The website where labs and researchers publish models anyone can download. Think of it as an app store for AI models. is where labs publish models anyone can download. When a lab puts a new model's files there, the model is already out, so trckr treats it as released straight away.
OpenRouter: A service that gives developers one place to use hundreds of models from many labs. New models often appear there early, sometimes anonymously. is a service developers use to reach hundreds of models in one place. New models often appear there on launch day, and labs sometimes test unreleased ones there under code names, which trckr labels “Mystery model”.
trckr reads official blogs and changelogs too, the notes labs publish when something changes. It also watches the public code of popular free tools that people use to run AI models. These tools often need updating before they can handle a new model, and that work sometimes happens in public before the launch.
Early signals
When a new model turns up before the lab has announced it, trckr calls that an Early signal: A hint that a model is coming before it's announced: a name spotted in a lab's systems, an anonymous test model, or code that adds support for it. Usually right, sometimes not.. Early signals are usually right, but not always. A name can belong to a test that never ships, a model can be renamed before launch, or a listing can be a mistake that's quickly removed.
So trckr labels early signals “Unconfirmed”, or “Mystery model” for code names, and they're switched off by default in alerts. If you like hearing first and don't mind the odd false alarm, you can switch them on for any of your alert channels. Each release links to the places it was spotted, so you can check for yourself.
From rumour to release
When the announcement comes, trckr marks the release as confirmed. If you had early signals on, you'll already have the alert and won't get it twice. If you had them off, this is when it reaches you.
Signals about the same model are merged into one release, so a launch with five sizes and a dozen copies still arrives as a single alert. An AI model then writes a sentence in plain English saying what the release is and where you can try it. Mistakes are corrected by hand when they're spotted.