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anonym29: I've said it before and I'll say it again.The people mad about this feel they are entitled to the heavily subsidized usage in any context they want, not in the context explicitly allowed by the subsidizer.It's kind of like a new restaurant started handing out coupons for "90% off", wanting to attract diners to the restaurant, customers started coming in and ordering bulk meals then immediately packaging them in tupperware containers and taking it home (violating the spirit of the arrangement, even if not the letter of the arrangement), so the restaurant changed the terms on the discount to say "limited to in-store consumption only, not eligible for take-home meals", and instead of still being grateful that they're getting food for 90% off, the cheapskate customers are getting angry that they're no longer allowed to exploit the massive subsidy however they want.Anthropic has every right to place rules around their generous subsidization of the Claude subscription plans, which give limits of ~8-12x as many tokens as you'd get for the same expenditure in the PAYG API.That said, demanding an open source repo remove information that Anthropic openly publishes and distributes for free (the prompt) is a bit odd...
cedws: Under what law can Anthropic force OpenCode to do this? Surely it's not illegal to publish code that interacts with an API that's open for everyone to see?
jitl: Same thing happened with Google, but Google started actually banning user's accounts. Hopefully it doesn't come to that with Anthropic.
akmarinov: It’s like they want people to not like them …
anonym29: The API has a very clear ToS prohibiting third-party client usage with the heavily subsidized Claude.ai subscription plans. Anthropic's right to reject or block that traffic, as well as to ban users who attempt this, is well-protected by the ToS those users neglected to read.Regarding the legal demands here, anyone can issue anyone else a cease and desist order at any time, for anything, in the USA. The demands do not need to have merit."Illegal" generally refers to criminal law, not civil suits, this was essentially Anthropic threatening to file a lawsuit. Opencode was under no legal obligation to comply and was not breaking any laws, they simply decided it was easier and cheaper to comply than to fight.
cedws: I thought TOS grants Anthropic the right to stop providing the service to a user, not go after them legally.
extr: The OpenCode guys have really surprised me in the way they've reacted to Anthropic shutting down the side-loaded auth scheme. Very petty and bitter. It's clearly just a business decision from Anthropic and a rational one at that, usage subsidization to keep people on the first party product surface is practically the oldest business move in the book and is completely valid.
tietjens: This is not my impression, could you explain what you're talking about?
bakugo: They don't need any actual written law behind their actions, all they need is money. What are you gonna do, fight them in court? Good luck with that, especially against a company directly associated with the US government and Palantir.
jryio: Businesses exercise power and control in the market. The purpose of this is to set a precedent (perceived or actual) — the auth system was a product, not an API. Anthropic is drawing the line between 'built on us' and 'built around us.'I don't necessarily see this as an evil action. It doesn't inhibit open source, it sets terms of service and practice boundaries.Granted this is a wildly unpopular approach, worse has happened in the OSS world...
p5v: What’s next - coming after all the projects that have been coded using Claude Code, claiming they are their property?
bilekas: Don't give them ideas please. They'll ask for more investment to do exactly this.I miss the days when open source was a way to get your product in the developers hands and build trust. Stuff like this shows that the tide has shifted to primary focus on shareholders and potential hold on patents and trademarks.
strideashort: Can anyone explain what’s going on here? Using API is illegal? that can’t possibly be since we now know API is not even copyrighted (which personally I disagree with bit whatever)… so what is going on here?
valunord: This wouldn't be so bad if they didn't have such a sucky tui or ecosystem. AI is chef's kiss, tooling is bottom barrel.
FloatArtifact: Maybe go third party for plugins?
raincole: What exactly are you referring to?
ipsum2: This seems like pure misinformation. The code lines that are actually changed: hint: { opencode: "recommended", -anthropic: "API key", openai: "ChatGPT Plus/Pro or API key", }[x.id], They're removing the ability to use OpenCode via Anthropic API key
mellosouls: This and threatening OpenClaw (now at OpenAI), Anthropic really on a roll making friends in Open Source.Previously discussed I think:Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode (173 points, 157 comments)https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46625918
noemit: Dario has stated multiple times he doesn't believe there is any value in open-weight models. Not surprised. This is not the behavior of an innovative company - it is fear-driven. They are seeing a rapidly shrinking moat.
Aerroon: >usage subsidizationIs this actually the case though? Because I can't imagine what kind of hardware they're running to have costs per 1M tokens be above like $3.
droidjj: It's not clear what exactly the "legal action" is based on this github link. My pure speculation is Anthropic's lawyers have come up with a liability story boiling down to OpenCode helping end users violate the Anthropic ToS (i.e. tortious interference with contract).
MyHonestOpinon: Can anyone ELI5 what is open code and why Anthropic is asking them to delete something ?
cedws: This argument has been decapitated countless times already on HN. Anthropic already enforce usage limits for everyone. If those limits are higher than what they want users to actually consume, that's Anthropic's problem.This move is anti-competitive and Anthropic knows it. They're hurriedly trying to lock the gates and lay landmines behind everyone after a massive surge of new subscribers so that they're stuck using Claude Code. They see it as vital to their survival to not just to be the gas pump for tokens, they need to control the platform.
Handy-Man: Seems fine to me. Why do people think they are entitled to use heavily subsidized services outside of the tools it's intended to work with per terms.
bdangubic: Terms or Service
Ekaros: Cleary they need to get AI which has not accepted those to rewrite it. That is the easy and fast solution these days. Or at most find a person who has not accepted tos do that.
extr: Ever since the shutdown of the side-load they've been pretty vocally anti-anthropic on twitter. Paranoid that anthropic is going to torpedo them via some backdoor now that they own bun, insinuating that anthropic shut down the auth from a position of weakness since OpenCode is a superior product, etc.The thing is OpenCode IS a great product, I'm not sure it's "superior", but unfortunately the way things are evolving where the model + harness pairing is so important, it does seem like they are in a similar position to Cursor (and do not have the resources to try to pivot into developing their own foundational model).
tietjens: The OpenCode bun dependency is an unsettling issue I would imagine.
Ycros: if you look at the last few weeks of commits, you can see they've been systematically ripping out everything bun-specific and moving to node
DanielHall: Anthropic is set to become the second-strongest legal department in North America
pbasista: > The API has a very clear ToS prohibiting ...What is the relevance?If I understand correctly, OpenCode, i.e. the creator of the tool, does not use Anthropic's API. Their users do.I am unsure where the connection can be made between the users violating some terms of service and a maker of a tool.
827a: I'm really struggling to understand how Anthropic is benefited by not allowing this. Its bad PR for no good reason. The only thing I can figure is that Claude Code is hemorrhaging money, they're too afraid to actually enforce reasonable token limits, and the only thing that's keeping it from totally bankrupting the company tomorrow is: controlling the harness and having the harness dynamically route toward Haiku or Sonnet over Opus when Opus is overloaded, without telling the user. Or maybe, they're extremely interested in observability of the exact prompts users are typing, and third party harnesses muck that data in with the rest of the context that gets sent, so its harder to detangle the prompt from the noise?Like, in any event, I seriously get the feeling that Anthropic doesn't just not care about their users, but actively dislikes them. Like, they must be losing so much money on each Claude Code subscriber that if a million people all said "we're switching" they just wouldn't care. I get this vibe even from watching videos of people working on the Antrhopic team; like they all think they're Gods above mere mortals, serving some higher purpose, and nothing matters to them except Building the Machine God.OpenCode is awesome. Claude Code is nothing special at all. Last month I switched to just using OpenCode with a Codex $200/mo subscription, and that's been great. Let the weirdos at Anthropic do what weirdos do, and hopefully one day their name is never mentioned again in polite society.
0x3f: They want lock-in for their UI/X, presumably. If Photoshop ran in the cloud, I doubt Adobe would let you make an alternative front-end either. Not that I'm sympathetic to them.
stanac: > If Photoshop ran in the cloudOff topic, but there is something like that: photopea, it's free and it's good enough for my use cases (I need it once a year maybe).
strictnein: You can use OpenCode programmatically, thus turning that $200/mo Claude Code account into a very cheap Opus 4.6 API service.I don't think there's anything really to it past that.
SeanAnderson: > You can use OpenCode programmatically, thus turning that $200/mo Claude Code account into a very cheap Opus 4.6 API service.Can you explain what you mean by this?
ahmadyan: opencode is a very meh agent.Source: i run pretty much all of these agents (codex, cc, droid, opencode, amp, etc) side-by-side in agentastic.dev and opencode had basically 0 win-rate over other agents.
green7ea: I've been using opencode and would be curious to try something else. What would recommend for self hosted llms?
truncate: Very new to self-hosted LLM, but I was able to run Codex with my local ollama server. (codex --oss)
terhechte: you can also use Claude Code programmatically with the `prompt` parameter in the cli.
lvl155: OpenCode is not a great product. All they’re doing is adding “features” constantly to keep interests. It’s a broken tool and I refuse to spend more time on it.
bitpush: Anthropic provides subsidized access to Claude models through Claude Code. It is well understood to be 'a loss leader' so that they can incentivize people to use Claude Code.OpenCode lets people take the Claude-Code-only-API-Key, and lets them use it in a different harness. Anthropic's preferred way for such interaction is getting a different, Claude API key (and not Claude Code SDK API key).---A rough analogy might be something like getting subsidized drinks from a cafe, provided you sit there a eat food. What if someone says, go to the cafe and get free drink and come sit over at our cafe and order food. It is a loose analogy, but you get the idea.
siva7: > It is well understood to be 'a loss leader'You have zero proof for this claim. It's like people read somewhere that stuff and keep spitting it out again and again without understanding..
extr: Is this what the legal request demanded or is this just something that OpenCode is doing out of spite? Seems unclear. To me the meat of this change is that they're removing support for `opencode-anthropic-auth` and the prompt text that allows OpenCode to mimic Claude Code behavior. They have been skirting the intent of the original C&D for awhile now with these auth plugins and prompt text.
somebodythere: Using your API key in third-party harnesses has always been allowed. They just don't like using the subsidized subscription plan outside of first-party harnesses. So this seems to be out of spite
harikb: 1. If alternate UX exists, the user can easily replace them with another model as soon as it comes out.2. All 'all-you-can-eat' plans everywhere comes with clause. Whether it is lunch at a restaurant or it is token-proxy-providers who might think of reselling Max plan to individuals at 20% markup.> Let the weirdos at Anthropic do what weirdos do, and hopefully one day their name is never mentioned again in polite society.Woof, that is a bit harsh... :) OpenAI will also face the same problem. They are doing it right now because they need to stand out in some way.
hirako2000: also for economic reason. Anthropic design Claude code so they are in control regarding how token get burned. To a degree.With 3rd party, designers have not incentive to be token consumption conscious.Gemini has a 1M token context, flash can be used for free via the web interface, can't paste more than handful thousands token.
827a: Agreed. What I suspect is: the dynamic model routing on CC is way stronger than people realize, and that "Percent-based usage" is intentionally vague because while it is probably measuring "200M tokens per week" or something, they don't want you asking questions about whether you're getting 200M Haiku tokens or 200M Opus tokens. A token is a token to the usage limit, where it comes from doesn't matter to the usage limit. But, to OpenCode it might, because OpenCode can just fire-and-forget everything at Opus (and probably does).
raw_anon_1111: I hate these non lawyer HN takes that call anything they don’t like “anti competitive”. Let’s just start with looking up “no duty to deal”.
cedws: I don't mean anti-competitive in the legal sense of the word, I mean that it literally is hostile to competition.
raw_anon_1111: It’s a company’s job to be hostile to competition
cedws: That’s a very ruthless American capitalist view. I would say a company’s job is to make the best product without resorting to cheap tricks.
Mashimo: OpenCode is a agent .. harnest? The CLI or UI tool you use as an AI agent, similar to ClaudeCode.You where not allowed to use your ClaudeCode subscription with other tool then ClaudeCode. I'm not sure if this is what got removed or if there is more too it.
aeriose: But the PR is also removing the ability to use Anthropic API key as well not just Claude Code subscription
theshrike79: [delayed]
bakugo: > they must be losing so much money on each Claude Code subscriber that if a million people all said "we're switching" they just wouldn't care.You're looking at it completely wrong. Claude Code is Anthropic's flagship product, not the API. They want to attract as many users as possible to Claude Code and lock them into their ecosystem, so they can squeeze them later. All of their questionable actions surrounding Claude Code and its subscription are ultimately in service of this goal.The subscription isn't some kind of charity, it exists specifically because they know the average user isn't willing to pay the exorbitant API prices to vibe code their groundbreaking new B2B SaaS idea, but they want to capture that market share anyway, because it's the core of their long-term strategy. The subscription arose from that: it's a form of predatory pricing designed to attract as many users as possible while they still have VC money to burn.Once that runs out and the time comes to IPO and start making real profits, they are going to increase the price drastically, and what's where the lock-in comes into play. If everyone is using some open-source alternative that natively supports every other provider on earth, they will be far less likely to continue paying for Claude specifically instead of just switching to a competitor. Not to mention, they'd also lose out on the free advertising from things like CLAUDE.md and the commit co-signing (because that's all those things are, the only reason Claude Code doesn't support AGENTS.md is because CLAUDE.md serves as an advertisement in public repositories).> like they all think they're Gods above mere mortals, serving some higher purpose, and nothing matters to them except Building the Machine God.This is all just part of their marketing strategy, and you shouldn't read too much into it.
noosphr: It's not unreasonable to expect the company behind the largest criminal copyright theft in history to not act morally.One does not pay a billion and a half dollars if they are innocent.
0x3f: Sad day when the hacker forum starts lamenting the poor copyright holders.
noosphr: Hacker news is about hackers in the same way that the peoples democratic republic of Korea is about democracy.
hirako2000: It is what the legal demands are. They requested removal of all Anthropic (trademark?) mentions.
rvz: I guarantee you that Cursor will be next to be targeted by Anthropic."Safety" is just complete control for them.
hirako2000: [delayed]
runako: > threatening OpenClawIIRC it was called Clawdbot when Anthropic complained. IANAL but I believe the holder of a trademark is obligated to defend it against infringement. Hard to say that Clawdbot was not potentially infringing, given its purpose. It's not clear how much leeway Anthropic had given his initial choice of name.
linux2647: I still think Anthropic should've bought Clawdbot/OpenClaw. Feels like a missed business opportunity to expand your market share by capitalizing on the hype.
awestroke: Why should they pay money for such crappy software?
browningstreet: This whole thread is people repeating wrong facts that have been clarified 100x in the previous threads on the same issue.I wonder why conversation can never progress. When a stake goes in the ground, it never ever comes out.FWIW OpenAI didn't buy OpenClaw.
hirako2000: And Nvidia didn't buy Groq.
danny_codes: This exactly. Kimi 2.5 has coding performance hardly discernible from Claude. The only way to maintain a business edge is to crush open source clients to force people into a closed ecosystem. Once there, create context moat where people are not in control of their own context data (cannot export it to open tooling). Maybe we can call it the Oracle play?It’ll be interesting to see if companies get tricked. I think it’s inevitable that it goes like MySQL/Postgres, where the open tools gets way better
tim-star: thats only because kimi 2.5 was trained using data stolen from claude. it wouldnt exist without riding claudes coat tails. none of the so called 'open source' models would
einr: Boo hoo. Claude was trained using data stolen from the collective works of all of humanity. If someone does it faster and cheaper by skimming the cream off the top of Claude then surely that’s just a market efficiency in the thieves business?
segmondy: Can you show any service that is selling API because they have turned a $200/mo Claude code account into an API service? Give me a break.
impulser_: This is my theory. They don't want other harnesses to use this because it costs them more. I don't know exactly how OpenCode works, but I'm assuming when people are using this plugin they are mostly using Opus for everything while Claude Code really only uses Opus for writing the actual code. It uses Haiku and Sonnet for almost all of the tasks outside of writing code.So it hard for them to control and understand the costs of subscriptions if people are using them on different hardnesses that do things that they have no control over.
aray07: you can choose your own model in claude code and it generally defaults to Opus
zajio1am: Is this relevant for people that use regular (per-token credit-based) API key?
paxys: No
segmondy: Anthropic is a shit company. I cancelled my subscription 2 years ago once they started calling for regulation. They might have gotten folks to side with them in the OpenAI debate, but they are just another shit company like OpenAI.
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celestialcheese: My guess is that the telemetry data they can collect from interacting with claude code is the "secret sauce" behind a lot of the improvements we're seeing with coding models right now. Look at cursors Composer-2 release today. Clicking "accept" during plan mode, committing changes and pushing to a remote repo, etc. is a really strong reward signal.Can't collect telemetry from applications you don't control.
andreagrandi: You mean their tool (I use it daily) is so bad despite all the data they collect?
croes: Why does Anthropic care how the tokens are consumed?
extr: Why does Netflix care how the movies they stream to you are consumed? Shouldn't your $8/mo allow you to stream any movie to OpenFlix and consume however you like?
ForHackernews: Unironically, you should. In a more just world, laws would mandate service providers not obstruct third party clients.
theshrike79: The pricing would also be different.
ForHackernews: Yes, content providers would have to compete with each other on price and library, and client providers could compete on UX and privacy.
shrx: After OpenAI?
darkwater: And they can ban your account if they think you are doing that. I think someone even commented here on HN they were banned by Anthropic for this.
mirzap: Why would they have that feature in claude code cli if it goes against the ToS? You can use Claude Code programatically. This is not the issue. The issue is that Anthropic wants to lock you in within their dev ecosystem (like Apple does). Simple as that.
hirako2000: If it wasn't the case, the Claude API pricing would be the same, $200 for unlimited use. But it's metered.We don't know if Claude Code bleeds money for every user that touches it. Probably not. But the different pricing is a strong enough clue that it's an appeal product with subsidized tokens consumption.
HDThoreaun: There is huge value in getting people to subscribe to recurring payments. Giving people a discount to do so makes sense and does not mean that the subscription service loses money.
browningstreet: When Peter gets tired of having a boss again, OpenAI will have zero OpenClaw.
estearum: Same reason movie theaters care about you not bringing your own snacks
croes: You pay for snacks in the cinema and they lose money if you buy elsewhere. Where does Anthropic lose money when I use OpenCode?
bitpush: This has been explained many times in this thread. Your subscription to Claude models for use in Claude Code is subsidized. That is, it is only meant to be used with that harness.When you use that API key with OpenCode, you're circumventing that.
manacit: This is, I'm sorry to say, simply not true. Anthropic and Open AI are materially ahead of every open source model out there at this time. The best they can hope to do is be Sonnet-adjacent, and even then I have not seen it.
raincole: Since I discovered pi I cancelled my Claude subscription and subscribed to ChatGPT. On one hand, the competition is making miracles. On the other hand, it's pretty dooming that there is only one (1) company that keeps my agent cost reasonable.
dvfjsdhgfv: > Since I discovered pi I cancelled my Claude subscription and subscribed to ChatGPT.Sorry, what is pi and how are you using it with ChatGPT for agentic coding?
joshstrange: > Sorry, what is pihttps://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/tree/main/packages/codin...> how are you using it with ChatGPT for agentic coding?OpenAI has publically blessed people using their subscriptions with different harnesses, like OpenCode and Pi.
joshstrange: I don't know why this is downvoted, see my nephew (?) comment [0] for a longer version, but this is not at all clear IMHO. I'm not sure if a "claude -p" on a cron is allowed or not with my subscription, if I run it on another server is it? Can I parse the output of claude (JSON) and have another "claude -p" instance work on the response? It's only a hop, skip, and a jump over to OpenClaw it seems, which is _not_ allowed. But at what point did we cross the line?It feels like the only safe thing to do is use Claude Code, which, thankfully, I find tolerable, but unfortunate.[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47446703
