On 30 October, Phorion published an advisory about the official Claude Code for VS Code extension on the Cursor Marketplace. Versions 2.1.312 and 2.1.313 carried a prepended payload that ran the moment Node loaded the file. Cursor has pulled both versions. If you're a small team, the uncomfortable part is that the laptop running that extension is probably also the laptop with your Stripe key, your cloud CLI login, and push access to main.

Promo pages, launch threads, and affiliate posts all promise the same thing: a code that makes trying a new tool cheaper. The useful ones are specific. The rest waste a checkout.

Stripe closed its acquisition of Metronome on 14 January 2026. Adyen closed its acquisition of Orb on 1 July. So the two metering engines most AI and API companies shortlisted are now owned by companies whose main business is processing your payments. If you're pre-revenue and about to put a usage meter on your product, that's worth ten minutes of thought before you write the integration.