Headless ThronesA LIVING HISTORY OF AI
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The wireIndependent of map date

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A LIVING HISTORY OF AI

This week in the AI world.

AI companies are kingdoms. Their share of recorded token usage shapes the land.

Loading source history…Recorded usage and fictional scenarios have separate modes.

The living worldThe age of possibility
THE OPEN OCEANA world in the making
CONTINENT1.0×Scroll or pinch to explore
Settled borders follow token activity
Charting the continent…
01 AUG29 OCT
DAY 60OF 90
A WORLD THAT REMEMBERS

What changed?

Explore the dated events behind the places.

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Recorded Source-backed facts Illustrated World effects Reconstructed Earlier development

INSIDE THE SIMULATION

World events

Fictional scenarios ·
THE HEADLESS THRONES JOURNAL

News from the AI world

Source headlines link to their publishers. Our original, agent-assisted stories are labeled Headless Thrones.

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The newsroom is opening.

External headlines and published Headless Thrones stories will appear here, with attribution and dates.

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All kingdoms
THE MODEL ALMANAC

Every building has a story.

480 fictional model variants across 12 kingdoms. Explore their simulated activity on .

Model & familyKingdomDaily tokensHealthCondition
A FIELD GUIDE

How this world works.

A miniature civilization shaped by a fictional AI ecosystem. This is a working simulation, not live market data.

How to read this world
◇ Land & borders
Share of tracked token activity
▥ Buildings & transport
Illustrated model infrastructure
♡ Public mood
Not connected · try Sandbox
♧ Food supply
Not connected · try Sandbox
ϟ Outages & repair
Official incidents, illustrated effects
⌁ Unclaimed frontier
Room for companies to come

Recorded activity. Illustrated life. Borders use OpenRouter text-token history, a platform sample. Events link to their sources. Buildings, transport and visual repairs are illustrations; historical development is reconstructed. No population counts are inferred.

12company kingdoms
480model identities
58%unclaimed frontier
01

Activity becomes land

Each kingdom represents a company. Its share of simulated token activity determines its share of settled land. The unclaimed frontier is reserved for future companies. A company’s displayed percentage is its token activity share, not its share of the entire continent.

02

Capital builds civilizations

Fictional capital backing and annual revenue determine development. Agrarian towns use horses and buggies; futuristic cities have glass skyscrapers and flying cars. Models remain the infrastructure.

03

Conversation becomes life

Average sentiment from fictional posts sets happiness. Posts about switching models tell migration stories. Token allowances become food supply. Outages damage infrastructure. The timeline shows changing service health; selected outage scenarios remain active until you choose another story. No population counts are inferred.

04

You set the story

Scrub through 90 days or choose a fictional scenario under “Change the story.” Visit a city and zoom to street level. The map shows simulated conditions for the selected day; the News journal contains separately published stories.

A note from the cartographer

Company finances and technology levels are invented to demonstrate the mechanic. Funding and revenue change buildings and transport. Token activity changes the balance of settled territory, while a large natural frontier makes room for new kingdoms. The terrain is an imaginary continent.

Future idea: partner plots

Products built on a company’s models could sponsor clearly labeled sites inside that company’s kingdom. This is a proposed advertising format; there are no sponsored plots for sale in this demo. Sponsorship would not change token activity or a kingdom’s share.
THE DATA BEHIND THE WORLD

A platform sample, clearly labeled.

Colored land Company kingdomsNatural land Unclaimed frontierNeutral land Unattributed activityTap a tile for its history · Pinch or scroll to zoom
58% unclaimed 42% settled

What moves the borders

Real tokens mode uses the OpenRouter daily token dataset, filtered to its text-model surface. Seven consecutive UTC days are added before calculating shares. The imported archive covers January 2025 through October 18, 2026; it is not automatically refreshed yet.

What “other” means

Each source day identifies its top 50 models and combines the rest into “other.” We keep that residual, undisclosed creators and mixed routing in neutral unattributed territory. Named publishers may have additional usage hidden there. Missing rows are unknown, not zero. The reserved green frontier is a separate design feature for future kingdoms.

What the map does not measure

It is not the whole AI market, a count of users or US-only activity. Provider tokenizers differ. Buildings are illustrations; real sentiment, allowances and finances are not connected. Official OpenAI incidents are connected; their effects on buildings are illustrations. Small shares may be below a whole map tile.

Identities and history

Models belong to their publisher, not the company hosting inference. Explicit aliases combine Meta namespaces, Qwen/Alibaba, xAI, Mistral, Moonshot and Z.ai. Fine-tune publishers keep their own identities. Historical gaps remain gaps. The source’s text filter can omit retired aliases; this is the published text surface, not a complete reconstruction of every historical model.

Independent gateway views

These sources measure different platform samples and periods. They publish percentages, not absolute token counts, and do not change the OpenRouter map.

Select a source to inspect its recorded token shares.

Attribution & reuse

Source: OpenRouter (openrouter.ai/rankings). CC BY 4.0. The download contains the exact source timestamp, counts, model identifiers and method.

OpenRouter rankings ↗ · CC BY 4.0 ↗

Sandbox is entirely fictional, including its token activity. Real-data collection and live news publishing are separate systems.