# OpenTools AI tool directory freshness audit — September 21, 2026

This frozen sample supports the OpenTools resource at `/resources/ai-tool-directory-freshness-audit-2026`.

## Method

OpenTools selected the 10 largest directory categories by the public category inventory at the observation time. It then took the first 10 alphabetical records returned by the public tools API for each category, restricted to records with `published=true`, `nsfw=false` and `archived=false`. The resulting sample contains 100 unique tool slugs.

This is a balanced category sample, not a prevalence-weighted or random sample of the entire directory. It is designed to compare data-completeness and freshness fields across large categories without allowing the largest category to dominate the result.

## Fields and definitions

- `age_days_at_2026_09_21` is the difference between the record's `last_updated` value and September 21, 2026 UTC.
- `pricing_data_present` is true when either `pricingModel` or at least one structured `pricing_plans` item was present. It does not prove that a listed price was current or correct.
- `verified_flag` reproduces the public record's boolean field. A false value does not prove that a tool is inaccurate; it means the public record was not marked `verified=true`.
- `tool_url_present` records field presence. It does not establish that the destination was reachable, canonical or independently verified.
- Description, feature and FAQ columns measure whether those public fields were populated, not whether the copy was current.

## Reproduce

For each category slug, request:

`https://opentools.ai/api/tools?published=true&nsfw=false&archived=false&sort=tool_name&categories={slug}&limit=10&offset=0`

The sampled categories were `ai-assistant`, `content-creation`, `education`, `image-generation`, `conversational-ai`, `image-editing`, `video-editing`, `productivity`, `e-commerce` and `website-builder`.

## Integrity

`sample.csv` SHA-256: `c7e5012a70d6d53a2abf15d7509845f4810f6963c99fbecaa4f9d2f4e7b5e24d`

`chart.png` SHA-256: `d23aee2148bcc58b0031121e4b8f2eeb2d9197f4825db7b4a5db91d8d49df623`

Source: OpenTools public directory API. Analysis and chart © 2026 OpenTools.