the leash changed hands

Here's the move, and it runs the same every time.

A new layer arrives and it genuinely frees you from the old one. The web freed you from the gatekeepers of print. Social freed you from owning a server. The model that writes back to you now frees you from the blank page. Each one is real. Each one is also a trade, and the trade is rarely on the label.

What you gain is leverage. What you hand over is dependence — on someone else's distribution, someone else's terms, someone else's decision about whether you still get reach tomorrow. The thing that freed you becomes the thing that holds you, and because it arrived as liberation, the holding doesn't register until the terms change.

The current shift has the same shape. The tools that draft, summarize, and decide are a genuine multiplier. They also route more of what you make through a handful of systems you don't control and can't inspect. That's not an argument against using them. It's an argument for noticing the trade while you make it, instead of after.

The tell is always the same. When a platform describes itself as setting you free, ask who's now holding the other end. Someone always is. Staying early isn't about the new tool — it's about reading that sentence before the room does.