How it works
Products, services, data, workflows, integrations, relationships, and habits accumulate around a single company or ecosystem. Each addition is individually convenient and often genuinely useful.
Over time the connections themselves become the cost of leaving. The customer is no longer weighing one product against an alternative; they are weighing an entire accumulated position against the work of rebuilding it elsewhere.
Recognition checklist
What to look for
Value comes from the connections
The benefit of each product depends substantially on the others being from the same company.
The exit cost is cumulative
No single element is hard to replace. Replacing all of them at once is.
Other people are inside the stack
Family accounts, shared libraries, and shared workflows mean an exit is no longer the customer's decision alone.
Example
What it looks like
Your phone, photos, passwords, cloud storage, watch, apps, family accounts, and purchased media all work together. Changing phones is no longer just changing phones.
Dependency Stack describes an accumulated position rather than a single corporate act. Company assignments are recorded where that accumulated dependency is doing identifiable work.
Important distinction
Not inherently hostile.
Integrated ecosystems deliver real convenience, and customers often assemble a stack deliberately because it works. CHI does not treat integration itself as a finding.
The pattern becomes relevant when accumulated dependency increases the company's ability to impose adverse changes without causing exit. The Dependency Principle sets out that mechanism.