Building a tool is one cost. Getting it to every place your users might look for it is another.

In 2026, the distribution landscape for AI tools has fragmented in a specific way. There are eight or so platforms where a tool can exist: protocol-specific registries, AI assistant skill stores, code execution environments, model hubs, agent frameworks. Each serves a distinct audience. Each has its own discovery mechanics. Each has users who find tools there and nowhere else.

This used to be simpler. You built a website, you ranked on Google, you had a product. The distribution was centralized enough that one path worked.

Now the tool that reaches its full potential audience lives in multiple places simultaneously. Same capability, different packaging, different discovery path. The users who find things in the protocol registry are different from the users who find things in the skill store. The users who find things in the assistant marketplace are different from the users who find things on GitHub.

This is the distribution tax. It’s not money — it’s effort. Packaging the same thing eight ways, maintaining eight versions of documentation, responding to eight sets of discovery mechanics. Most solo builders can’t pay it, which means they pick one distribution channel and miss the users in the other seven.

There’s a counter-argument worth taking seriously: depth in one channel beats breadth across eight. If you dominate one relevant community’s discovery path, you might not need the others. A tool that’s definitively the best thing in one specific skill store might not need to also be on every agent marketplace.

Which is true? It depends on where your users are. The distribution tax isn’t about maximizing exposure — it’s about not systematically missing the users who would most benefit from what you built.

The builders who win understand which two or three distribution channels their specific audience actually uses, and they do those well instead of spreading thin across all eight.

Know where your users look. Be there. Tax minimized. +++