Data collection period: October 17-24, 2025
This week brought major shifts in the AI development tools landscape: Claude Code crossed 22 million monthly downloads, OpenAI launched two new developer packages, and our data reveals the total AI package ecosystem now processes nearly 1 billion downloads per month.
🚀 Claude Code Surges Past 22M Monthly Downloads
@anthropic-ai/claude-code hit 22.3 million monthly NPM downloads this week, cementing its position as the #2 most-downloaded AI development tool behind only OpenAI's SDK.
NPM Ecosystem Snapshot (Oct 22)
- openai: 29.8M downloads/month
- @anthropic-ai/claude-code: 22.3M downloads/month (+new data point)
- ai (Vercel AI SDK): 14.7M downloads/month
- @anthropic-ai/sdk: 10.1M downloads/month
- @langchain/core: 7.1M downloads/month
Context: Claude Code launched in February 2025. Reaching 22M monthly downloads in 8 months represents one of the fastest adoption curves we've tracked for a developer tool.
Why this matters: This isn't just install counts—these are active monthly downloads from package registries, indicating real projects adding Claude Code to their dependencies.
📦 OpenAI Ships Two New Developer Packages
OpenAI quietly launched two new NPM packages on October 6:
1. @openai/chatkit
- Launched: October 6, 2025
- Downloads: 43,777 in first 16 days
- Purpose: Pre-built UI components for OpenAI chat interfaces
- Signal: OpenAI moving up the stack from APIs to UI libraries
2. @openai/guardrails
- Launched: October 6, 2025
- Downloads: 2,977 in first 16 days
- Purpose: Safety and content filtering for LLM outputs
- Signal: Enterprise compliance becoming a first-class concern
Analysis: These launches show OpenAI competing directly with abstractions like LangChain by providing higher-level building blocks. The guardrails package specifically targets enterprise adoption barriers.
🐍 Python Ecosystem: 813M Monthly Downloads
The Python AI ecosystem dwarfs JavaScript in raw volume:
PyPI Top 5 (Oct 22)
- openai: 120.0M downloads/month
- prompt-toolkit: 107.8M downloads/month
- transformers (Hugging Face): 90.9M downloads/month
- langchain: 79.9M downloads/month
- torch (PyTorch): 67.1M downloads/month
Total tracked: 813.7 million monthly downloads across 45 AI packages
NPM vs PyPI:
- NPM (JavaScript): 97.1M total monthly downloads
- PyPI (Python): 813.7M total monthly downloads
- Ratio: Python AI packages download 8.4x more than JavaScript
Why the gap?
- Machine learning research/training happens in Python
- Data science workflows dominate
- Enterprise ML pipelines standardized on Python
- JavaScript catching up on inference/deployment side
🔍 New Package Launches This Quarter
Beyond OpenAI's releases, several significant packages debuted:
@github/copilot (Sept 25, 2025)
- Downloads: 219,642/month
- First official GitHub Copilot NPM package
- Previously only available through IDE extensions
- Enables programmatic Copilot integration
@anthropic-ai/mcpb (Sept 11, 2025)
- Downloads: 332,240/month
- Model Context Protocol for Browsers
- Extends MCP to web environments
- Strong early adoption (332K in first month)
@qwen-code/translator (Aug 28, 2025)
- Downloads: 33/month
- Alibaba's Qwen model tooling
- Early days, but signals Chinese model ecosystem
📊 Ecosystem Growth Rates
Comparing our Oct 22 data to previous snapshots:
JavaScript (NPM) Tier Distribution
- Mega-popular (>10M downloads): 9 packages
- Very popular (1M-10M): 10 packages
- Popular (100K-1M): 4 packages
- Emerging (<100K): 17 packages
Python (PyPI) Tier Distribution
- Mega-popular (>10M downloads): 18 packages
- Very popular (1M-10M): 9 packages
- Popular (100K-1M): 8 packages
- Emerging (<100K): 10 packages
Trend: The Python ecosystem has 2x more "mega-popular" packages than JavaScript, indicating deeper market penetration.
🎯 What We're Watching
1. Claude Code vs Copilot Official Package
- Claude Code: 22.3M downloads
- @github/copilot: 219K downloads
- 8 months old vs 22 days old
The new @github/copilot NPM package (launched Sept 25) is still ramping up. But it faces a different challenge: Copilot already has 55M+ VS Code installs. This package enables programmatic integration, not IDE usage.
2. OpenAI's Guardrails Adoption
At 2,977 downloads in 16 days, guardrails is seeing slow initial pickup. This could indicate:
- Enterprise evaluation cycles (long sales process)
- Developers waiting for documentation/examples
- Competing solutions already entrenched
Watch for: Documentation updates, enterprise case studies, integration guides
3. Ollama Steady Growth
- NPM: 1.3M downloads/month
- PyPI: Data pending next collection
- Docker Hub: 34.5M+ pulls (from previous data)
Ollama continues its quiet dominance of the local LLM space across all platforms.
4. Anthropic MCP Ecosystem
With @anthropic-ai/mcpb hitting 332K downloads in month one, the Model Context Protocol is seeing real adoption. Combined with Skills framework momentum, Anthropic is building a developer ecosystem that competes with OpenAI's plugin architecture.
🔬 Methodology Notes
All data collected October 17-24, 2025 using:
- NPM Registry API: Real-time download counts (Oct 22 snapshot)
- PyPI Stats API: Monthly download totals (Oct 22 snapshot)
- Package metadata: Launch dates, versions, authors
- PostgreSQL time-series: Historical trend tracking
Packages tracked:
- 57 NPM packages (40 with data)
- 57 PyPI packages (45 with download data)
- 17 data sources total
💡 What This Means
For developers: The "Big 3" are set: OpenAI, Anthropic, and local models (Ollama). Choose based on use case, not hype. Multi-provider setups are becoming standard architecture.
For startups: Claude Code's 22M downloads in 8 months shows there's still room for rapid growth in AI tooling. The market hasn't consolidated yet.
For investors: Watch the guardrails/safety tool category. OpenAI launching @openai/guardrails signals enterprise compliance is a bottleneck worth solving.
For enterprises: Python dominates ML/training workflows (813M downloads). JavaScript dominates prod deployments and web apps (97M downloads). Plan your hiring accordingly.
📊 Access the Data
All findings backed by real data:
- NPM tracking: 57 packages, 97.1M monthly downloads
- PyPI tracking: 57 packages, 813.7M monthly downloads
- Historical data: June 2022 → October 2025
Get the full dataset: vibe-data.com
Data collected October 17-24, 2025. NPM/PyPI snapshots from October 22, 2025. All metrics verified against official package registries.
Tags: #AITools #DeveloperTrends #ClaudeCode #OpenAI #Anthropic #Ollama #NPM #PyPI