I used the Kagi Ultimate subscription intensively for approximately seven months and am considering downgrading now.<p>While I am still happy with the search, I find the value of the assistant no longer worth it. At first, I thought I would be able to replace other providers with the wide range of offered models, but now I find myself often going to distinct providers. Kagi seems to have introduced a harsh and generalized input token limit for prompts (detached from what the underlying model can handle), which makes it almost impossible to work with code or documents. I think the VW example in the announcement makes it clear that the assistant is only intended to respond to prompts of a few sentences—searching by sentences instead of keywords. I don't see input for documents or things like code execution coming here, so the difference of $15 monthly can get me fancier features.<p>Mixing the output of the model with the limited content of approximately five websites (= Assistant with internet access), on average, is most of the time counterproductive for me. The sites mentioned in the sources of the output are often not sites I would usually visit or get information from (they usually don't correspond to the top results on Kagi web search). I have used search engines for decades now and have built a sort of index/pattern/feeling in my head for which site I am going to visit, which AI can not match for me.<p>The lenses are nice but are also pretty specialized. Most of the time I find myself just doing a broad query, which in most cases will already satisfy me.<p>I will definitely continue to use Kagi for search. There is no comparable search experience out there, and it makes searching definitely more effective.