The impression that I get is that Kagi is planning to sort of pursue the path that Proton is, albeit for a different suite of software, but may be overlapping.
As a subscriber of both kagi and proton, I do note that proton's bundle (their unlimited) is 12.99 (which would be akin to kagi's PRO plan), Proton's bundle plan is also quite often discounted. Proton's visionary plan really seems similar to Kagi's ultimate plan.
Proton has a much larger scale of course which allows them to do these things, nonetheless, this still affects you as people will consider similar offers there if there is an overlap.
Personally I've been really happy being able to use search AND assistant on the pro plan. The AI cost for assistant seems to hover around 2 usd for me and making around 400-1000 searches a month. So I'm guessing I'm on the heavier side as a user of Kagi.
I think removing assistant from the Pro plan would make Kagi lose goodwill for sure, if anything, you should grandfather that for existing customers. Though generally I do think having a small allowance for assistant usage is a compelling offer as it complement search quite nicely. So removing it altogether would be a loss.
Also Kagi ultimate really is too expensive for the majority of users, most users of proton are not visionary accounts, they are using the "pro" bundle plan. Similarly, most users will never upgrade to the ultimate plan, and I don't think you should expect that.
Another story related to Proton, I started out as a VPN only user, I didn't use the VPN very often, when I started I paid 5 usd every month. It was just a subscription that rolled on, at some point, after a couple of years, I noticed they had upgraded that account to unlimited while keeping me on the 5 usd. That totally converted me to using all the other products they have, as well telling other people to use Proton. I will effectively be a customer for life, unless their offer markedly degrades, since they have set up a foundation to govern Proton, I don't think that will happen.
