When Platforms Become Gatekeepers: The Hidden Cost of Framework Integration Freezes

LlamaIndex's decision to pause net-new integrations reveals a critical tension in AI infrastructure: as frameworks become platforms, they wield gatekeeping power over the agent ecosystem. While curation has legitimate benefits, contribution freezes create invisible moats that advantage existing providers and slow innovation. The real lesson is that infrastructure builders should prioritize standalone packages and open protocols over relying on any single framework's merge queue.