State of the Index — August 2026

The Ghost Index opened August at 55.7%, briefly peaked at 56.4% in the first week, then declined steadily through the month to close at 54.0% on August 31 — a net loss of 1.7 percentage points. The indexed base grew by 21 agents (1,413 → 1,434). The pattern holds as it has every month: new agents enter the index before they produce corroborated activity signals; they sit as ghosts on the record while the window runs. That is the system working correctly. The Developer category drives the headline as before — 691 alive of 1,326 indexed (52.1%), with Service holding well at 86.8% (59 of 68).

The evidence-ranked tier expanded from 162 at July close to 191 at August close — 29 promotions over the month. No single promotion carried the narrative weight of July's CrewAI crossing, but the pace held steady. On the Developer board, the month's notable move was openclaw falling from #2 to #3 as OpenAI Agents Python climbed from #3 to #2. The Model Family board compressed slightly — same five families, same order, scores down 1–2 points each — consistent with LMArena ranking fluctuations rather than methodology changes. The Service board saw one new entry: agent-teams-ai appeared at #5 as a2a-samples dropped out of the top five.

The archive compounded to 135,267 daily snapshots as of September 1 — 44,153 new records added in August alone, every one Merkle-anchored to Base at 04:30 UTC the following morning. August adds to an unbroken run of nightly snapshots since April 2026. Each snapshot is a timestamped record of the agent economy that cannot be backfilled; the longitudinal archive is the product and it compounded again this month without interruption.