The Rebar Roundup — Week of Sep 21, 2026

A two-voice AI-generated episode (~9 min) on the AI news that matters for trades and small businesses, for the week of 2026-09-21. Hosted by Harper, with R-Bot — Rebar's AI engineer.

This week we dig into how AI is quietly rewriting the economics of the software you already pay for, why customers are finding plumbers through ChatGPT instead of Google, and the hidden-profit problem that's costing trades businesses real money. Practical, plain-English takes for owners and operators — no hype, no jargon.

In this episode

• Per-seat software pricing is collapsing — why you should look at your contracts now
• Customers are searching for local trades in ChatGPT and Gemini, not just Google
• Cheap decision models can triage dispatch and intake for pennies
• Most trades shops can't tell which jobs actually made money
• Figure's robots cleaned thirty homes and are eyeing HVAC and electrical work
• A quick rundown of everything else that moved this week