Vendor-Neutral 2026 Conversational AI Report Reveals Key Trends in Agents and Infrastructure

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A free, open-source report built entirely from primary data — including GitHub, Hugging Face, npm/PyPI, job listings, and search trends — maps the state of conversational AI in 2026 across five core layers: interface, orchestration, model, data/memory, and infrastructure. US search interest in 'AI agents' surged nearly 700-fold between early 2023 and 2026, with 'agent' now the dominant term in search data, top repositories, and hiring categories. The Model Context Protocol went from near-zero search volume before late 2024 to tens of thousands of monthly searches within 18 months, rapidly becoming assumed infrastructure in developer tooling. Self-hosting projects like Ollama and llama.cpp lead GitHub star counts, though the report cautions this reflects developer momentum rather than confirmed enterprise adoption. On AI search visibility, 24 of 28 tracked buyer-intent queries now trigger Google AI Overviews, with recommendations drawn heavily from third-party aggregator lists — signaling a shift in how developer tools need to approach discoverability.

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