Discussion

cat-turner: Doesn't this unfairly impact startups? Why not instead allow issuance of API keys with usage caps? It seems like a money grab.

jasonlotito: > you’ll no longer be able to use your Claude subscription limits for third-party harnesses including OpenClaw. You can still use them with your Claude account, but they will require extra usage, a pay-as-you-go option billed separately from your subscription.How is what you are asking for different from what they are saying?

2001zhaozhao: There are going to be a lot of tools coming soon that are "agent-agnostic", i.e. can run on CLIs including Claude Code. I am personally experimenting with using a combo of MCP + custom UI layer to provide custom tools with bespoke UX and thus turn Claude Code (or any other CLI agent for that matter) into whatever I want. I wonder how they'll deal with that.For a good existing example developed by a known company, check Cline Kanban: https://cline.bot/kanbanThey don't have the MCP-bundling idea that I'm experimenting with, however.

SkyPuncher: Just give me a subscription tier where I’m not being blocked out every afternoon.Im hitting rate limits within 1:45 during afternoons.I can’t justify extra usage since it’s a variable cost, but I can justify a higher subscription tier.

bitpush: even higher than $200? gosh, what are you doing to hit limits every day?

jasonlotito: Yes, this was made clear a while back and should not be a surprise. (Honestly, I had to double-check the date/time to see if this was actually posted today.You can use your Claude Code subscription with third-party tools, but you have to use the Claude Code harness. Or, you use the API. OpenClaw could use the Claude Code harness, but they don't.

eagleinparadise: Anthropic measures your usage based on token consumptionWe are paying for a certain amount of token consumptionWhy then, is this an outsized strain on your system Anthropic?It's like buying gasoline from Shell, and then Shell's terms of services forcing you to use that gas in a Hummer that does 5 MPG, while everyone else wants to drive any other vehicle.

bitpush: I feel icky replying in favor of a for-profit entity, but here goes ..> We are paying for a certain amount of token consumptionI dont think you are. The specific arrangement you have is you pay for a subscription to be used with Claude Code. It isnt access to tokens, so you can do whatever you please.---An analogy would be a refillable cup for a soda at a restuarnt. They will allow you to refill how many ever times you want, but only using the store provided cup - and you cant bring your own 2L hydroflask or whatever. You're paying not just for the liquid, but for the entire setup.

christopher8827: This is why people are switching over to Codex

minimaxir: Codex just ended their double-usage offer and OpenAI just had an exec shakeup, so it'll be interesting to see how Codex reacts, or if people have usage issues with Codex.

kjuulh: Anthropic should calm down, I get that they're trying to either build a moat, or simply curb what is essentially subsidized tokens. It is technically true that when you've got a claude code subscription you pay for the product with its terms, and those terms doesn't include you grabbing the token and using it for another application. They're also trying to build a competitor to openclaw so it makes sense they're trying to crush it. But it feels like such a feeble moat, that it looks silly. Claude Code is nice, but it is not that nice.

zephyreon: Yah well I'll be downgrading my subscription to the $20/month plan for the light chats I have with AI outside of using custom harnesses and will figure out a better provider for the agentic tooling.

firloop: FWIW I am sympathetic to Anthropic here, but OpenClaw _is_ using the Claude Code harness (via claude -p). But yes, Anthropic has made it clear they don’t like this.

jasonlotito: So they changed it? Last I heard they hadn't. Where did they announce they were switching to the Claude harness? I can't find anything.

firloop: I received the email and I have been using “Option B”, which wraps the Claude CLI. https://docs.openclaw.ai/providers/anthropic#option-b-claude...

winterrx: So now what happens to startups and ADE's orientated around Claude like Conductor.. no more Claude for them I guess back to Codex!

jasonlotito: Nothing. They aren't using third party harnesses, which is the issue here as spelled out in the post.> you’ll no longer be able to use your Claude subscription limits for third-party harnesses including OpenClaw.My understanding is that Conductor and others aren't using it.

charcircuit: You can set the monthly extra usage cap to $1000 or something to cap how much it can cost per month.https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12429409-manage-extra...

8note: > We’ve been working to manage demand across the board, but these tools put an outsized strain on our systems. Capacity is a resource we manage carefully and we need to prioritize our customers using our core products.but couldn't i use this in off times only?

firloop: This is slightly different from what OpenCode was banned from doing; they were a separate harness grabbing a user’s Claude Code session and pretending to be Claude Code.OpenClaw was still using Claude Code as the harness (via claude -p). I understand why Anthropic is doing this (and they’ve made it clear that building products around claude -p is disallowed) but I fear Conductor will be next.

charcircuit: You are making the false assumption that all token consumption costs the same when it doesn't. Yes in the limit the price to serve the model and generate a response is O(tokens), but when tokens is smaller it can be cheaper to generate a new token than when tokens is bigger. If other harnesses prompt with more tokens than Claude Code it can be more expensive to serve.

stavros: They have limits. I don't care how expensive it is to serve, I'm paying them for a given amount of tokens (a limit which THEY SET) and they want to also dictate where I spend those tokens.

stavros: The analogy is bad. Anthropic does not let you "refill however many times you want", they have limits. That's what "limits" in your account is.It would be like the restaurant saying "you can buy the 2-liter soda pack" and then getting all uppity when you bring your own 2L hydroflask in.

Multiplayer: Big Giant Million Dollar Question: Where does having Openclaw using Claude Code via ACP fall? It's using the Claude Code harness, not the model directly.If you are not aware, ACP creates a persistent session for steering rather than using the models directly.

stavros: Looks like I'm going to be switching to OpenAI. I know the whole "well those are the terms" Stockholm syndrome argument, but no, those weren't the terms when I signed up. If one of the parties decided to unilaterally change terms in any other everyday situation, nobody would think it was acceptable, but we've become so resigned to corporations having enough money to make the law suit them that we think it's moral behavior.No, Anthropic, just because you added a clause that says "we can change these terms whenever" doesn't make it right. I'm paying you a set amount of money a month for a set amount of tokens (that's what limits are), and I should be able to use these tokens however I want.Luckily, there are alternatives.

_pdp_: The solution as usual is open source.For example...We recently moved a very expensive sonnet 4.6 agent to step-3.5-flash and it works surprising well. Obviously step-3.5-flash is nowhere near the raw performance of sonnet but step works perfectly fine for this case.Another personal observation is that we are most likely going to see a lot of micro coding agent architectures everywhere. We have several such cases. GPT and Claude are not needed if you focus the agent to work on specific parts of the code. I wrote something about this here: https://chatbotkit.com/reflections/the-rise-of-micro-coding-...

stavros: > The solution as usual is open source.> Obviously step-3.5-flash is nowhere near the raw performance of sonnetI feel like these two statements conflict with each other.

happyopossum: [delayed]

verdverm: Those are subsidized tokens because you are also using their product.They have a per-token payment option where you can use any tool you like

password4321: Github Copilot supports Anthropic models with any client but they have a monthly usage cap after which it is pay-per-prompt.

benced: They changed the terms going forward so you’re changing your behavior going forward? Nobody but the psychos you’re making up would think you’re out of line here. They’re not required to offer the same product forever and you’re not required to pay forever.

eranation: Speedrun of how to ruin a perfectly great reputation in a course of 1 month. (Clawdbot takedown, source code leak, now this...)

andai: Why are they doing that? Opus is the only good way to run Claw. Do they regret making it cheaper or what?Also what's the point of Claude -p if not integration with 3rd party code? (They have a whole agents SDK which does the same thing.. but I think that one requires per token pricing.) I guess they regret supporting subscription auth on the -p flag

loveparade: That's why I am using Codex. I slightly prefer Claude in terms of code quality, but it's close, but not being able to use my subscription with other CLIs and apps ruins Claude for me.

freedomben: Indeed, this is the outcome they are going to create. It seems like their goal is to get people using their core tools, and they want that bad enough to subsidize it for some users. The net effect on users like me however, will be the exact opposite. I'll be switching to a different tool.

supliminal: Since the OpenClaw creator is posting on HN I’d like to hear some commentary from him directly.

ramoz: Super confusing email. Not sure why I received. Am i to assume my account was flagged? I only use my subscription for Claude Code.UPDATE:reply on x Thariq @trq212 only flagged accounts, but you can still claim the credit

freedomben: Ah thank you, this is very helpful distinction to know.When they shut down open code, I thought it was a lame move and was critical of them, but I could understand at least where they're coming from. With this though, it's ridiculous. Claude core tools are still being used in this case. Shelling out to it to use it there's no different than a normal user would do themselves.If this continues, I'll be taking my $200 subscription over to open AI.

Seattle3503: Am I still allowed to invoke cc in a bash script, or is that out too? Interactive sessions only.

g-mork: My answer to this is simply rolling back to the pro plan for interactive usage in the coming month, and forcefully cutting myself over to one of the alternative Chinese models to just get over the hump and normalise API pricing at a sensible rate with sensible semantics.Dealing with Claude going into tardo mode 15 times a day, constant HTTP errors, etc. just isn't really worth it for all it does. I can't see myself justifying $200/mo. on any replacement tool either, the output just doesn't warrant it.I think we all jumped on the AI mothership with our eyes closed and it's time to dial some nuance back into things. Most of the time I'm just using Opus as a bulk code autocomplete that really doesn't take much smarts comparatively speaking. But when I do lean on it for actual fiddly bug fixing or ideation, I'm regularly left disappointed and working by hand anyway. I'd prefer to set my expectations (and willingness to pay) a little lower just to get a consistent slightly dumb agent rather than an overpriced one that continually lets me down. I don't think that's a problem fixed by trying to swap in another heavily marketed cure-all like Gemini or Codex, it's solved by adjusting expectations.In terms of pricing, $200 buys an absolute ton of GLM or Minimax, so much that I'd doubt my own usage is going to get anywhere close to $200 going by ccusage output. Minimax generating a single output stream at its max throughput 24/7 only comes to about $90/mo.

SkyPuncher: I literally hit my 5 hour window limit in 1.5 hours every single day now.2 weeks ago, I had only hit my limit a single time and that was when I had multiple agents doing codebase audits.

zdragnar: > I think we all jumped on the AI mothership with our eyes closedOh no, there's plenty of us willing to say we told you so.What's more interesting to me is what it's going to look like if big companies start removing "AI usage" from their performance metrics and cease compelling us to use it. More than anything else, that's been the dumbest thing to happen with this whole craze.

skyberrys: Is this going to nuke all bring your own API 3rd party tools? I've been casually using fewshell https://github.com/few-sh/fewshell with my Claude api key, I really hope it's going to keep working. I've just finally managed to turn myself into a reasonable devops team with it.

minimaxir: This does not affect anyone who uses an API key.

lmedinas: OpenAI mentioned already that it's ok to use Codex with Openclaw.

minimaxir: Months ago. Things in the AI world change quickly.

bontaq: This is my big question too. It seems by intent it's to kill it, including ACP, but I don't know.

benn67: Haha, I almost expected this.Say goodbye to my 600$/ month Anthropic.

minimaxir: The people who have enough Opus usage such that they were using multiple Max accounts are the exact users Anthropic want to kick out.

nrmitchi: This actually seems rather generous of them? Not only are they offering credits equal the cost you paid, but they're offering refunds if you disagree.Anthropic not allowing Claiude Code subscriptions to be used with other projects isn't "pulling the rug out"; you paid for an API subscription to use Claude Code, and now you're using it for a different purpose and a different product.If Tesla offered $10/month charging for your Tesla, and then a bunch of people turned around and use their Tesla Charge subscription to charge all different electric vehicles, and battery packs, and also hooked up a crypto mining rig to it, would you be surprised if they said "Nope, we're cutting this off. You can only use your Tesla Charge subscription for your Tesla vehicle"?

stavros: Nope, I paid for an Anthropic subscription that I could use with the Agents SDK. Then they decided I shouldn't be able to use that, just because.> If Tesla offered $10/month charging for your TeslaNo, "if Tesla offered $10/month for 100 kWh of charging", and yes, I expect to use those 100 kWh with any vehicle I want, because there's a limit on the resource I'm paying for.I can understand caps on unlimited, I can't understand caps when there are strict limits.

randall: Does anyone have a link to the "read more"?

rvz: > To make the transition easier, we’re offering a one-time credit for extra usage equal to your monthly subscription price. Redeem your credit by April 17. We’re also introducing discounts when you pre-purchase bundles of extra usage (up to 30%).The Anthropic casino wants you to continue gambling tokens at their casino only on their machines (Claude Code) only by giving more promotional offers such as free spins, $20 bets and more free tokens at the roulette wheels and slot machines.But you cannot repurpose your subscription on other slot machines that are not owned by Anthropic and if you want it badly, they charge you more for those credits.The house (Anthropic) always wins.

0xy: Except you put $200 into the CC casino and you can (if you choose) extract thousands in token value.

wild_egg: I keep hearing OpenClaw runs on pi?

jakelazaroff: Anthropic changing their terms is fine. You taking your money elsewhere is also fine. What's the issue here?

mh-: Any idea what caused your account to be flagged, then?

loveparade: Yeah and it doesn't help that the claude CLI itself IMO isn't that great. It feels a bit like a sloppy vibe coded app. So they are forcing me to use an inferior product.

arewethereyeta: Marketing geniuses. They had 2 options here:1. Make a better product/alternative to Openclaw and start eating their userbase. They hold the advantage because the ones "using their servers too much" are already their clients so they could reach out and keep trying to convert. Openclaw literally brought them customers at the door.2. Do everyone royally and get them off their platform - with a strong feeling of dislike or hatred towards Anthropic.Let's see how 2 goes for them. This is not the space to be treating your clients this way.

mrbungie: From you can tell from they long-term strategy they are not marketing geniuses, but rather they try to signal are "moral geniuses". That's the game they are playing, I don't really know if it is going to work or not.

raincole: So is Codex the only SOTA that welcomes third-party harness?

jesse_dot_id: There seem to be a ton of people who don't understand how subscription services work. Every single one of them oversells their capacity. The power users that use the services a lot are subsidized by those who don't use it as much, which tends to be the vast majority of the user base. OpenClaw is an autonomous power user. The growing adoption of this walking attack surface was either going to A) cause the cost of Claude to go up or B) get banned to protect the price of the service for actual users.

randall: exactly. They probably have unsustainable margins on accident.

SkyPuncher: That's a had sell to a finance team.

SkyPuncher: Professional software development. I literally have 2 to 5 terminals running all day.

colechristensen: Every service is being sold at a deep discount chasing market share, but it's not lasting forever.

g-mork: Speaking only personally of course, I'm completely over the chat idiom in almost every way. Where is all this future demand coming from? By the time Android lands a God mode ultimate voice assistant it's pretty much guaranteed I will be well beyond the point where I'd want to use it. The whole thing is starting to remind me of 3G video calling where the networks thought it'd change everything, and by the end of it with all the infrastructure in place, the average user has made something like 0.001 3G-native video calls over the lifetime of their usage.Would really love some path forward where the AI parts only poke out as single fields in traditional user interfaces and we can forget this whole episode

nightski: It's fine, their moat is thin. Frontier models as a service isn't really in the best interest of anyone anyways. Only a matter of time.

asgraham: Are you arguing that eventually a competitor will emerge that does support OpenClaw with a subscription model? Wouldn’t that just be more expensive for the exact same reason Anthropic is banning it?

tekacs: OpenAI have literally gone out of their way to explicitly support this sort of thing. As they did with OpenCode.Honestly, this just looks like what Dylan of SemiAnalysis suggested on Dwarkesh – that they've massively under-provisioned capacity / under-spent on infrastructure.That would honestly be a comforting answer if true, because I would gladly take 'we can't afford to do this right now' over 'we are self-preferencing, and the FTC should really take a look at us, even if we're technically not a monopoly right now, since we're the only strongly-instruction-following model in town and we clearly know it'.

techgnosis: Doesn't OpenAI allow this today?

raincole: You mean whether another competitor will emerge? Right now we have OpenAI.

harha: One interesting observation I had between ChatGPT and Claude before I was familiar with openclaw came when I asked if about the difference between ChatGPT and Claude for coding and if I can get to a setup that can use both. At that time I had both subscriptions, felt it was better to build with Claude but was frequently reaching limits.ChatGPT found it was a great idea and that I can use Claude for planning and gave me instructions on how to best hand off the building part. Claude told me it’s a horrible idea.Claude also burns much more liberally through tokens, eg reading through entire irrelevant docs.Openclaw is great for resolving this since I much more control which work goes where and also gives a much better user experience without all the back and forth to understand what context it has (my use case is to build things from my phone while I’m in senseless meetings in my day job).Fully agree on the alternatives. In the end Claude’s experience is worse, while it still makes bad decisions if you let it. Better to get a good workflow on a less capable model.

userbinator: and they’ve made it clear that building products around claude -p is disallowedImagine not being able to connect services together or compose building-blocks to do what you want. This is absolute insanity that runs counter to decades of computing progress and interoperability (including Unix philosophy); and I'm saying this as someone who doesn't even care for using AI.

colechristensen: You absolutely can, just pay for their API usage. The subscriptions are deeply discounted if you use your full quota compared to the API.

causal: Their whole business model seems built around selling you limits that you will never be able to utilize: limit you to tools that will never run long.Claude Code seems designed to terminate quickly- mine always finds excuses to declare victory prematurely given a task that should take hours.

SpicyLemonZest: If you're on a subscription plan, you're paying for a certain amount of maximum token consumption. Mass market consumers generally prefer this model to one where they're billed for actual usage. But making it work requires statistical estimates of how much people will consume, which often requires excluding third party tools that circumvent those estimates.To use your analogy, if Shell sold you a subscription to fill up your Hummer up to 30 times a month, they wouldn't let you use that subscription to fill gas cans with a GMC logo taped to the side. They couldn't, without overcharging the people who just want to average out their cost of driving.

fc417fc802: I think that just as with ISPs people become irate when they feel there's been a bait-and-switch. Had they very loudly advertised the subscription as limited to their harness up front with a note about maximum token use people presumably wouldn't feel cheated. Whereas they seem to be pulling a "pray I don't alter it further" for the second time now.You don't get to sell a subscription described primarily as being for some quantity of X and then change the terms every time people find creative ways to use the stream of X they believe themselves to have purchased from you. People thought they were purchasing in bulk.

Zopieux: There's no way in hell this amount of tokens is reasonable for anything or worth it

skyberrys: Oh thank you! I'm using these tools but occasionally I feel like a medieval horse rider trying to drive a sedan. Glad to know, I haven't used OpenClaw, I prefer the meat computer for autonomous compute.

verdverm: I agree, eventually the open models will be good enough and we can pay for our own infra and cut out the middle man. Also, the smaller frontier are nearly as good today and I expect the mega models will be used primarily for distillation

danpalmer: Please don't use grossly offensive terms in this forum. That sort of language is not welcome here.

g-mork: Oops, fixed

gjsman-1000: > we are self-preferencing, and the FTC should really take a look at us, even if we're technically not a monopoly right nowTell me you have zero clue what a monopoly is or what the law is, without telling me.Monopoly law relies on broad categories, not narrow ones. You can’t call Microsoft a monopoly because they are the only company that makes Windows. You can’t call Amazon a monopoly because they are the only company that makes AmazonBasics. You can’t call Anthropic a monopoly because their product is 20% better for your use case, otherwise by definition no company has any incentive to do a good job at anything.

tekacs: Oh, give me a break. I know the law around this incredibly well. Reasonable people can disagree about whether the law is appropriate. The whole point of laws is that they should match intent – and as for '20%': "tell me you don't understand how a small quantitative gap can result in a step change in capability."

gjsman-1000: > Oh, give me a break. I know the law around this incredibly well.Then don’t make BS up like implying Anthropic is a monopolist for the crime of competence.> tell me you don't understand how a small quantitative gap can result in a step change in capabilityThe law does not give a darn about this. Being a good competitive option does not make you a league of your own. If I invent a new flavor of shake, the Emerald Slide, am I a monopolist in shakes because I’m the only one selling Emerald Slides? If you go and then start a local business reselling cupcakes and I’m your only supplier, am I a monopolist then? Absolutely not.

tekacs: You do realize that I called out in my post they are absolutely not a monopoly by the law, right? I know all-too-well what the definition is.We have a similar situation in mobile where Apple may not be considered a monopoly, but people have walked around for a decade with a supercomputer in their pocket that is wildly underused.Things have gotten faster; things are different than they were decades ago when a lot of this was devised.The reality of the matter is that some of us just want to see innovation actually happen apace, and not see 5, 10, or 30 years of slowdown while we litigate whether or not such a company is holding all the cards, while everyone is collectively waiting at the spigot for a company to get its shit together because we're not allowed to fix the situation.For what it's worth, I'm hopeful that the other model providers will catch up and put us in a situation where this conversation is irrelevant.What I'm afraid of is a situation where we see continued divergence, and we end up with another Apple situation.

mil22: It's a good way to win market share and build goodwill, but one has to wonder whether this class of usage is marginally profitable for them (or anyone) and how sustainable their lenient policies will be for them long term.

nojito: >Make a better product/alternative to Openclaw and start eating their userbase.There's a good chance they do not have the infrastructure to do that.

Sinidir: Does anyone know. How would that relate to simply wrapping claude code as a subprocess?

datahack: Ok. Someone explain to me why they would f themselves this hard with software engineers when they are absolutely winning. This just seems like a bad move.Is it infrastructure? Are they unable to control costs?Everyone else is spending like money is water to try to get adoption. Claude has it and is dialing back utility so that its most passionate users will probably leave.I don’t understand this move.

sethherr: I’m also terrified of this.When this happens I will have to look at other providers and downgrade my subscription. Conductor is just too powerful to give up. It’s the whole reason why I’m on a max plan.

entropoem: Anthropic and OpenAI are the clearest examples of why, in an organization of specialists, the experts themselves should not be the CEO or the final decision-maker once the company’s challenges extend beyond just the product.Just look at how Sam Altman has led OpenAI step by step to dominate—and choke out—Anthropic, a company founded by the group of engineers who were once part of the turmoil at OpenAI.Anthorpic's product thinking is terrible even though it is technically very good.

operatingthetan: So you were using API tokens already, this doesn’t affect you. Why are you quitting in protest?

sunsunsunsun: Im still using opencode with claude pro so im confused.

estimator7292: They've been running a "double credits" promo for several weeks, which expired on the first of this month.

wyre: Any model besides Claude. AFAIK anthropics the only corp to say no to other harnesses.

danpalmer: A more apt comparison is Telsa offering $10/m for 100kWh for your car, or pay-as-you-go for any cars, but then you setting up shop at a charger, putting up a sign saying anyone can charge on your subscription until you reach that limit.

djhope99: Personally I appreciate the clarity and technical enforcement vs banning accounts.I switched OpenClaw to MiniMax 2.7. This combined with Claude over telegram does enough for me.OpenClaw used to burn through all my Claude usage anyway.

nandomrumber: You’re welcome to start OpenSpigot yourself, and see how investors feel about you giving away your technical / IP / market advantage on launch day.

snarkyturtle: Google releasing Gemma 4 yesterday was prescient. Toying around with Zed + Gemma 4 on my laptop is 95% as good as using a cloud provider.

verdverm: They have plenty of high paying users that will soak up what the claws are consuming in capacity. They are thinking about those customers and delivering them a better experience

alasano: "these tools put an outsized strain on our systems"AKA when you fully use the capacity you paid for, that's too much!

danpalmer: You don't pay for capacity, you pay for an interface. Paying for capacity is what API keys are for.Similarly, on a home internet connection you might pay for a given size of pipe, but most residential ISPs don't allow running publicly accessible servers on your connection because you'll typically use way more of the bandwidth.

mccoyb: Why not use datacenter of geniuses to increase capacity? Grug confused.

benn67: I have 2 max 20x subscriptions. So not API tokens.I do a lotta stuff don’t need to get into it here.

stavros: You're using it with a PAYG API key, not a subscription.

lrvick: They also forced OpenCode to remove support as well. Thankfully there is always self hosting and a shit ton of competitors that let you use whatever local software you want.

weird-eye-issue: I have heavy usage on two accounts with option c and didn't get an email

buremba: I get why they block OpenClaw and it makes sense but I wonder if they can actually detect OpenClaw calling Claude Code CLI using something like acpx.It's simply identical to how people use Claude Code locally.

cowlby: I just discovered Pi Coding Agent and found that it's lean System Prompt + a tuned CLAUDE.md brought back a lot of the intelligence that Opus seemed to lose over the last month.Sucks to be pushed back to Claude Code with opaque system behavior and inconsistency. I bet many would rather pay more for stability than less for gambling on the model intelligence.

hombre_fatal: Too lazy to look, but if OpenClaw is just "claude -p" as commenters here claim, then how do they know when you're using OpenClaw?

noritaka88: This feels less like a pricing issue and more like a structural mismatch.Subscriptions assume “human usage” — bursty, limited, mostly interactive. Agent systems are closer to autonomous infrastructure load running continuously.OpenClaw is a good example of this. Once agents operate freely, they don’t behave like users — they behave like infrastructure.That’s why this kind of restriction isn’t too surprising.Long term, it seems likely this pushes things toward: - API-first usage - or local / open modelsrather than agents sitting on top of subscription-based UIs.

goosejuice: What you're saying is conceptually true for subscription services in general, but thats not why they are making this change. There's a 5 hour limit and a weekly limit. Those are hard token limits. Everyone on a plan pays for the max set of tokens in that plan. The limits manage capacity. The solution to that isn't a change of ToS, it's adjusting the limits.In other words this is about Anthropic subsidizing their own tools to keep people on their platform. OpenClaw is just a good cover story for that. You can maximize plans just as easily w/ /loop. I do it all the time on max 20x. The agent consuming those tokens is irrelevant.For what it's worth I don't use OpenClaw and don't intend to, but I do use claude -p all the time.

Aurornis: > I think we all jumped on the AI mothership with our eyes closed and it's time to dial some nuance back into things.I’m kind of confused by these takes from HN readers. I could see LinkedIn bros getting reality checked when they finally discover that LLMs aren’t magic, but I’m confused about how a developer could go all-in on AI and not immediately realize the limitations of the output.

mogili1: What about when you use Claude agent SDK on your laptop?Extra usage is very sneaky you don't get any notice that you are using extra usage and could end up with unnecessary costs in case you would have preferred to wait an hour or so.

scottcha: I think there was a clarification posted on Reddit that said Claude Agents SDK didn't apply for now.

muyuu: For me it's surprising that they expected anything other than heavy utilisation at that price point. People don't subscribe at those prices and forget about it.

CubsFan1060: It seems like you have an impossible ask? Why not 4 subscriptions to last you 5 hours?

danpalmer: An interesting... weird(?), take. I see Anthropic as being mostly a much more compelling option. They've avoided most negative backlash, they have a much higher percentage of paying users, plenty of enterprise contracts, etc. They avoided money pits like Sora.OpenAI seems to mostly be chasing the consumer market, but not doing great at it.

dboreham: I'm a very happy Anthropic customer. They could charge me 3X the current rate and it'd still be a great deal.

sarchertech: Based on the way subscriptions work for every other business, if you’re hitting the limits, you are not profitable for them.My guess is a plan with double the limits would need to be 5-10x as expensive.

dboreham: I got the email and I've only ever run the legit claude client.

CubsFan1060: I don’t really follow what you’re saying. You mention the 5 hour limit. Is your expectation that they have enough capacity so that everyone can hit their 5 hour limit all the time? Or you are proposing that’s how they limit capacity for a subscription?Do you have an example of how this is how they have advertised or sold the plan? I don’t recall ever seeing any advertisement that their plan is simply pre paying for tokens.

mccoyb: It is confusing for a company to sell you the subscription service, say "Claude Code is covered", ship Claude Code with `claude -p`, and then say "oh right, actually, not _all of Claude Code_, don't try and use it as a executable ... sorry, right, the subscription only works as long as you're looking at that juicy little Claude Code logo in the TUI"The disrespect Anthropic has for their user base is constant and palpable.

colechristensen: This strikes me the same way the people in college who would print 497 empty pages at the end of the semester for the quota "they'd paid for" or that one guy who made lemonade at restaurants with the free lemon wedges and sugar packets. "Contempt for users" is silly. Adjusting terms to handle users who use things as not intended isn't contempt.

_pdp_: I mean, it is easy to understand once you realise that there is no spoon.Despite their power, frontier models are threatened by open-source equivalents. If AGI is not on the horizon and model performance is likely not going to be enough of a differentiator to keep the momentum going, the only other way is to go horizontal - enterprise solutions, proprietary coding agent harnesses, market capture, etc.If AGI is in sight, none of these short-term games really matter. You just need to race ahead.

codybontecou: Are you using the Chinese models through their individual services or via an intermediary layer?

pxc: [delayed]

chatmasta: We use Pi at work (where we pay per token) and I’d love to use it personally too. From what I’ve read, nobody has been banned for using Pi yet… I wonder if Anthropic minds this much as long as it’s still human usage, or if they’re mostly focused on stamping out the autonomous harnesses. Unfortunately Pi is also what OpenClaw uses so it could easily get swept up in the enforcement attention.Or maybe I’ll just get a Codex subscription instead. OpenAI has semi-officially blessed usage of third party harnesses, right?

beanjuiceII: i think i'll no longer be giving my money to anthropic

gnabgib: Discussion (655 points, 1 month ago, 793 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47069299

dboreham: I'm fine with it. I don't want my subscription subsidizing the claw people.

stavros: Three Max subscriptions.

bethekind: I think my next steps are: 1) try out openai $20/month. I've heard they're much more generous. 2) try out open router free models. I don't need geniuses, so long as I can see the thinking (something that Claude code obfuscates by default) I should be good. I've heard good things about the CLIO harness and want to try openrouter+clio