Adoption dailySecurity & identity

Today's story: Passkeys

Passkeys claim top spot as daily adoption hits 1.37x pace

Identity technology overtakes coding tools in daily usage growth, signaling a maturation of user-facing security standards across the ecosystem.

The numbers: Passkeys takes No. 1: installs at 1.37× the four-week pace. Passkeys: 1.37× momentum across 1 signal. 6 of 21 trends are climbing and 1 is cooling.

Backfilled on October 7, 2026 using only data published by September 30, 2026.

Passkeys, signal by signal

Each pedestal is one signal: its height is last week's typical day against the four weeks before, and the ring marks that normal. A lit pedestal is rising 1.15× or more.

Passkeys takes No. 1: installs at 1.37× the four-week pace.

Passkeys: 928k npm installs a day on a typical day last week, against 680k the four weeks before

Bars are single days, the line is the 7-day average, the shaded band is the last 7 days and the dashed line is the four-week typical day (median).

Data through npm 09/28, Wikipedia 09/29, HN 09/29. Source: npm downloads API.

Passkeys now lead the adoption board with nine hundred twenty-eight thousand daily installs, a one point three seven times increase over the four-week average. This surge places it ahead of OpenAI Codex, which jumped from rank sixteen to seven yesterday. The rise in passkey usage suggests developers are prioritizing secure authentication layers as a primary concern for new applications, moving beyond experimental phases into standard practice.

This movement coincides with a broader acceleration in developer tooling. OpenAI Codex now sees three point four million daily installs, up from thirty thousand a year ago. While AI coding assistants dominate raw volume, the specific growth in passkeys indicates that security is becoming an integrated part of the build process rather than an afterthought. The correlation between rising coding tool usage and identity standard adoption points to a synchronized maturation of the stack.

Meanwhile, other trends show mixed signals. Small modular reactors and Starlink are also climbing, but their growth rates lag behind the identity sector. The cooling of robotaxis and eVTOL air taxis contrasts with the steady rise in digital identity tools. This divergence highlights that while physical tech adoption remains volatile, digital security standards are gaining consistent, measurable traction in daily developer workflows and user interactions.

Watch next: Whether passkey adoption sustains its 1.37x momentum while OpenAI Codex maintains its significant year-over-year install growth.

Column drafted by qwen/qwen3.8-27b from the numbers below; every figure checked against them.

The numbers

On a typical day last week, npm installs of @simplewebauthn/browser reached 928k, 1.37× the 680k of a typical day in the four weeks before.

Next on the board: Small modular reactors at 1.33×, led by Wikipedia readers at 1.33× (595 on a typical day against 447).

Quiet adoption: Bun runtime installs run at 1.19× their four-week pace while attention sits at 0.9×. Developers are adding it faster than people are reading about it.

Cooling fastest: Robotaxis at 0.78×, with Wikipedia readers down to 195 on a typical day from 251. Part of that is a spike on Sep 8 in the weeks before.

The long view: OpenAI Codex installs over the last four weeks are 115× the same four weeks a year earlier (3.4M a day against 30k).

Trend pages: PasskeysSmall modular reactorsStarlinkRobotaxis

Quiet adoptionBroad riseOne-day spike

6 of 21 trends are climbing; Passkeys leads at 1.37×

Momentum is a typical day (median) of the last 7 divided by a typical day of the 28 before, averaged across every signal with enough data. 1× means no change. Rings mark each signal.

Data through npm 09/28, Wikipedia 09/29, HN 09/29. Source: npm downloads API, Wikimedia pageviews, Hacker News search.

4 of 7 developer tools are being installed faster than they are being read about

Across: attention momentum (Wikipedia readers and Hacker News stories). Up: install momentum (npm). Both on log scales; the 1× lines split the corners.

Data through npm 09/28, Wikipedia 09/29, HN 09/29. Source: npm downloads API, Wikimedia pageviews, Hacker News search.

Small modular reactors draws the most Wikipedia readers against its own normal: 1.33× over the last week

Each cell is one day's readers divided by that trend's four-week typical day. Brighter runs hot, darker runs cold.

Data through npm 09/28, Wikipedia 09/29, HN 09/29. Source: Wikimedia pageviews API, user agents only.

Every number on the board
All 22 trends, September 30, 2026. Per-day figures are a typical (median) day of the last week. * = base too small to count (under 1,000 installs, 100 readers or 1 story a day).
PasskeysWeb platform1.37×Climbing928k1.37×851×*0.41.2×*0
Small modular reactorsEnergy1.33×Climbing––5951.33×0.00×*0
StarlinkSpace1.21×Climbing––2,3981.21×0.92.7×*0
WebGPUWeb platform1.2×Climbing1.6M1.19×1501.22×0.91.26×*0
AI agentsAI agents1.17×Climbing678k1.23×1,1891.12×131.16×0
AI API SDKsAI agents1.16×Climbing19M1.16×––––0
OpenAI CodexAI coding1.1×Steady3.7M1.12×411.16×*4.71.09×0
Solid-state batteriesEnergy1.1×Steady––4301.1×0.00×*0
Heat pumpsEnergy1.09×Steady––5201.09×0.12×*0
SpaceX StarshipSpace1.08×Steady––1,4751.08×1.76.9×*0
Smart glassesDevices1.06×Steady––2391.06×0.91.71×*0
Model Context ProtocolAI agents1.05×Steady11M1.18×1,5381.08×6.40.91×0
Bun runtimeWeb platform1.04×Steady725k1.19×2250.9×0.60.59×*0
Local LLMsAI agents1.03×Steady167k0.95×7601.11×0.60.94×*0
Gemini CLIAI coding1×Steady64k1×––0.0n/a*0
Vibe codingAI coding1×Steady––1,6871.21×1.00.82×0
Claude CodeAI coding0.97×Steady2.1M0.86×––7.11.09×0
Humanoid robotsRobots0.94×Steady––3450.94×0.70.87×*0
Quantum computingDevices0.92×Steady––1,8791.07×2.60.78×0
eVTOL air taxisSpace0.9×Steady––1850.9×0.00×*0
RobotaxisRobots0.78×Cooling––1950.78×0.00×*0
Vehicle-to-gridEnergyn/aNot enough data––580.92×*0.00×*0

Method and sources

Every trend gets up to three free, daily signals. Installs: npm registry downloads for the packages named on each trend page (developer adoption; it counts CI and mirrors too, so it measures direction, not people). Attention: English Wikipedia readers per day, human agents only, and Hacker News stories with the term in the title. For each signal we divide a typical day (the median) of the last 7 complete days by a typical day of the 28 days before. Medians keep one launch-day spike from carrying a whole week; both windows are whole weeks, so weekend dips sit equally in both. Momentum is the geometric mean of the signals that clear a minimum base. npm reports some days as zero for every package at once; we treat those as missing.

The column is drafted by a free language model from the day's computed facts only, and is published only if every number in it matches those facts; otherwise the computed paragraphs stand alone. Theme labels come from Jev (or its Cloudflare Clef fallback, as noted) choosing from a fixed list of ten.

    Stages: Breakout 1.5× and up, Climbing 1.15×, Steady 0.87× to 1.15×, Cooling below. Raw data: /api/trends/2026-09-30.json.

    Wed, September 30, 2026

    Passkeys No. 1 · 1.37×

    Passkeys claim top spot as daily adoption hits 1.37x pace

    Passkeys takes No. 1: installs at 1.37× the four-week pace.

    Read the day

    Tue, September 29, 2026

    Small modular reactors No. 1 · 1.36×

    Small modular reactors top the board as hardware demand rises

    Small modular reactors takes No. 1: Wikipedia readers at 1.36× the four-week pace.

    Read the day

    Mon, September 28, 2026

    Passkeys No. 1 · 1.33×

    Passkeys outpace AI agents in daily adoption growth

    Passkeys is today's fastest-rising trend: installs at 1.33× the four-week pace.

    Read the day
    1 / 3