The Durability Curve
The Two-Rate Diagnostic

How long does your layer stay scarce?

You can be right about AI and still get nothing for it. Value collects at the scarce layer every customer passes through. Name yours, and see where you sit: your absorption against your layer’s clock.

Two questions · 60 seconds · your answers never leave your browser.
The clock starts the day your edge worksFig. 01
Step 1 of 2

Name your absorbing layer

The thing a new AI capability has to pass through to reach your customer.Example: if a hospital won’t switch away from you, a better model doesn’t help a rival catch you, so that edge is real. If your edge is a clever prompt, a better model just erases it. Pick the layer your advantage actually runs through; if a few fit, the one hardest to copy. If you don’t sell an AI product but use AI to run your business, that’s usually the process you rebuilt around it: Proprietary workflow integration.

Step 2 of 2

Your two rates

One you read off a press release. One you have to measure on purpose.

Your absorption rate
Of the new AI capabilities you seriously tried this year (a copilot, a forecasting model, an automation you rolled out), how many moved a number your CFO or customer would recognise? A moved number is a renewal saved, a price you raised, hours or headcount out, revenue in. It doesn’t count if you only shipped a feature or the demo impressed people. Running a multi-unit org? Run it once per business unit; a blended number hides which unit is the bottleneck.
A rough count is fine. Round to the nearest few; you’re after the ratio, not an audit.
Do you own the layer you named?
Answer for the layer that matters most to your business. You can run it again for another.
Your two-rate read

Your absorption rate
—
Your layer’s half-life

One rate you measure (your own count of what landed); one we estimate (our dated read of the layer’s clock, which you refine below). The plane pairs your arithmetic against our judgement, not two measured coordinates.

Where you sit · absorption × the clock
Your move
Start building your next layer within
Watch
Where value is still scarce

The full map

Every layer is on a clock. These are the seven a capability passes through, from the ones still worth owning to the ones already melting. Your layer is marked.

Most moats are a stack
Own another layer too? Add it, and your floor becomes the slowest clock you own.
A free instrument from The Durability Curve · companion to How Long Until Your AI Edge Stops Paying?
Snapshot current as of 25 Jun 2026; every signal dated and sourced. Falling price or margin at a layer is the cleanest sign its clock is running. The half-life ranges are our dated reads off the signals below; the specific months are our calibration off each layer’s ranking, not a figure any single source states, and we revise them as the signals move. The build-window sits at roughly a third-to-half of the half-life, on the premise that a build-and-adopt cycle runs one to two years.