Meter-Gate-Referee Concentration

Meter-Gate-Referee Concentration is the degree to which a single assistant vendor simultaneously sets your usage limits, controls which capabilities you can reach, and arbitrates disputes over its own service. When all three sit with one party, a routine pricing or access change becomes a client delivery risk with no independent recourse. For agencies this matters because frontier assistants now sit inside billable work: a model tier retired or a seat price doubled mid-retainer lands on your margin, not the vendor's. Forrester's November 2026 research names this overlap directly, noting that application vendors control the meter, the gate, and the referee at once. A concrete case: Gemini 4 Carbon opened to all users on 10 November 2026 with the price doubling on 1 December, a 21-day window to reprice or reroute client work. Score each assistant on all three dimensions before it becomes load-bearing in delivery.