[HN Gopher] Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subs...
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       Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subscriptions
        
       Author : sergiotapia
       Score  : 555 points
       Date   : 2026-01-09 03:44 UTC (19 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | minimaxir wrote:
       | This appears to be a part of a crackdown on third-party clients
       | using Claude Code's credentials/subscriptions but not through
       | Claude Code.
       | 
       | Not surprising as this type of credential reuse is always a gray
       | area, but weird Anthropic deployed it on a Thursday night without
       | any warning as the inevitable shitstorm would be very
       | predictable.
        
         | immibis wrote:
         | They're losing money on every inference, so of course they want
         | as many banned users as they can get away with.
        
         | metadat wrote:
         | Yes, it appears they've been cracking down elsewhere as well:
         | https://github.com/charmbracelet/crush/pull/1783
         | 
         | Are they really that strapped already? It took Netflix like 20
         | years before they began nickel and diming us.. with Anthro it's
         | starting after less than 20 months in the spotlight.
         | 
         | I suspect it's really about control and the culture of
         | Anthropic, rather than only finances. The message is: no more
         | funtime, use Claude CLI, pay a lot for API tokens, or get your
         | account banned.
        
           | __loam wrote:
           | All of these companies are losing money in the billions every
           | quarter. Look at how frequent the raises are.
        
             | metadat wrote:
             | It isn't that simple, demand is growing and they're
             | investing in that growth. With the exception of ElGoog the
             | providers are all private entities, so we don't really
             | know.
             | 
             | Edit: TMTD, hi! That makes sense, yeah.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | Unit profitability is out of reach, the demand curve
               | exceeds the profitability curve.
               | 
               | Edit: hello, good to chat again!
        
         | cma wrote:
         | They've added this change at the same time they added random
         | trick prompts to try and get you hit enter on the training opt
         | in from late last year. I've gotten three popups inside claude
         | code today at random times trying to trick me into having it
         | train my data with a different selection defaulted than I've
         | already chosen.
         | 
         | (edit 4 times now just today)
        
           | skeptic_ai wrote:
           | Last time I mentioned they are sketchy I got a ton of
           | downvotes. I'm happy to see more support.
        
           | transcriptase wrote:
           | More evidence the EU solved the wrong problem. Instead of
           | mandating cookie banners, mandate a single global "fuck off"
           | switch: one-click, automatic opt-out from any
           | feature/setting/telemetry/tracking/training that isn't
           | strictly required or clearly beneficial to the user as an
           | individual. If it's mainly there for data collection, ads,
           | attribution, "product improvement", or monetization, it
           | should be off by default and remain that way so long as the
           | "fuck off" option is toggled. Burden of proof on the
           | provider. Fines exceeding what it takes to get growth teams
           | and KPI hounds to have legal coach them on what "fuck off"
           | means and why they need to.
        
             | croes wrote:
             | Remember what happened do the DNT flag in the browser?
             | 
             | They just ignored until it was gone.
             | 
             | If you don't give them a way to trick and annoy you into
             | accept tracking they ignore completely what you want
        
               | adastra22 wrote:
               | DNT wasn't actually legally mandated.
        
               | memoriuaysj wrote:
               | remember how all of HN and tech people were saying that
               | DNT is a Micro$oft scam designed to break privacy because
               | it was enabled by default without requiring user action?
               | 
               | to the point that Apache web server developers added a
               | custom rule in the default httpd.conf to strip away
               | incoming DNT headers !!!
               | 
               | https://arstechnica.com/information-
               | technology/2012/09/apach...
        
               | wolvoleo wrote:
               | DNT was useless because it didn't have a legal basis. It
               | would have been amazing if they had mandated something
               | like this instead of the cookie walls.
               | 
               | Advertisers ignored it because they could. And complained
               | that it defaulted to on, however cookies are supposed to
               | be opt-in so this is how it's supposed to work anyway.
        
         | B480FA8D wrote:
         | The "crackdown" is really mild though. To be fair to Anthropic,
         | I don't think they have been committed to banning third-party
         | tools.
         | 
         | github:anomalyco/opencode?rev=5e0125b78c8da0917173d4bcd00f7a005
         | 0590c55 (a trivial patch that works for now)
        
       | commanderkeen08 wrote:
       | No. Do you realize how much of a joke Claude code is? Under the
       | hood. How they implemented client auth?
       | 
       | Well let me tell you
       | 
       | https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/blob/dev/packages/open...
       | 
       | You literally send your first message "you are Claude code"
       | 
       | The fact that this ever worked was insane.
       | 
       | Headline is more like anthropic vibes a bug and finally catches
       | it.
        
         | koakuma-chan wrote:
         | There is no way to prevent people from using a custom client.
        
           | skeptic_ai wrote:
           | So now you just need to remove the "read" tool to
           | authenticate?
        
             | _flux wrote:
             | Or call the tool "Read" and it works, according to an issue
             | comment.
             | 
             | But actually the solution is checking out how the official
             | client does it and then doing the same steps, though if
             | people start doing this then Anthropic will probably start
             | making it more difficult to monitor and reverse engineer.
             | 
             | It might not matter, as some people have a lot of expertice
             | in this, but people might still get the message and move
             | away to alternatives.
        
               | realharo wrote:
               | The endgame is a small background agent that runs Claude
               | Code every once in a while, inspects its traffic, and
               | adjusts on the fly.
        
               | _flux wrote:
               | Then they'd start pinning certs and hiding keys inside
               | the obfuscated binary to make traffic inspection harder?
               | 
               | And if an open source tool would start to use those keys,
               | their CI could just detect this automatically and change
               | the keys and the obfuscation method. Probably quite
               | doable with LLMs..
        
               | realharo wrote:
               | Without breaking legitimate clients?
               | 
               | At some point it becomes easier to just reevaluate the
               | business model. Or just make a superior product.
        
               | _flux wrote:
               | Aren't Anthropic in control of all the legitimate
               | clients? They can download a new version, possibly
               | automatically.
               | 
               | I believe the key issue here is that the product they're
               | selling is all-you-can-eat API buffet for $200/month. The
               | way they manage this is that they also sell the client
               | for this, so they can more easily predict how much this
               | is actually going to consume tokens (i.e. they can just
               | put their new version of Claude Code to CI with some
               | example scenarios and see it doesn't blow out their
               | computing quota). If some third party client is also
               | using the same subscription, it makes it much more
               | difficult to make the deal affordable for them.
               | 
               | As I understand it, using the per-token API works just
               | fine and I assume the reason people don't want to use it
               | because it ends up costing more.
        
           | gpm wrote:
           | Game developers disagree...
        
             | koakuma-chan wrote:
             | Time to add Denuvo to Claude Code?
        
             | serf wrote:
             | yeah, and it's been an easy win for game developers and
             | smooth sailing on that front, too.
             | 
             | ..right?
        
           | notpushkin wrote:
           | There are ways to make it painful. Though it would probably
           | be painful for "legit" users, too.
        
         | krackers wrote:
         | Is there any other way to do it though? Even if they
         | implemented some form of auth logic, since it's all client side
         | anyone could spoof it. The only real way to distinguish Claude
         | Code from non-Claude Code is behavioral analysis (e.g. system
         | prompt, set of tools, etc.). Or engage in a cat and mouse game
         | of increasingly obfuscated challenge/auth.
        
         | firloop wrote:
         | Tonight we are all Claude Code, Anthropic's official CLI for
         | Claude.
        
         | justinsaccount wrote:
         | That sort of mechanism is not a "joke" and is often used for
         | trademark/legal reasons, not technical ones.
        
           | zerohp wrote:
           | The joke is that AI companies pretend to care about doing
           | legal things.
        
           | ronsor wrote:
           | Both Nintendo and Sega tried that, and it did not work as
           | they legally intended.
        
       | mcast wrote:
       | I'm not surprised they closed the loophole, it always felt a
       | little hacky using an Anthropic monthly sub as an API with a
       | spoofed prompt ("You are Claude Code, Anthropic's official CLI
       | for Claude") with OpenCode.
       | 
       | Google will probably close off their Antigravity models to 3P
       | tools as well.
        
       | wahnfrieden wrote:
       | Meanwhile, OpenAI co-signs https://github.com/steipete/oracle
       | which lets you use your ChatGPT subscription to gain
       | programmatic/agentic access to 5.2 Pro via automating browser
       | access to the web frontend. Karpathy and other leaders have
       | praised this feature on X.
       | 
       | If that is indeed so welcome, imagine what else you could script
       | via their website to get around Codex rate limits or other such
       | things.
       | 
       | After all what coud be so different about this than what browsers
       | like Atlas do already
        
         | sams99 wrote:
         | Codex requires stuffing a very specific system prompt otherwise
         | the custom endpoint will reject you
        
       | behnamoh wrote:
       | Anthro is having its Apple moment: too many customers means the
       | company is always on the news, for better or worse.
       | 
       | When iPhones receive negative reviews it's not like only Apple
       | screwed up; others did too, but they sell so much less than Apple
       | that no one hears about them:                   "Apple violated
       | my privacy a tiny bit" makes the news;         "Xiaomi sold my
       | fingerprint info to 3rd party vendors" doesn't.
       | 
       | Similarly, Anthropic is under heavy fire recently because
       | frankly, Claude Code is the best coding agent out there, and it's
       | not even close.
        
         | NamlchakKhandro wrote:
         | Lmao? seriously. Claude Code is epic levels terrible compared
         | to opencode.
        
           | dkdcio wrote:
           | how so?
        
           | throwaway7783 wrote:
           | Can you elaborate?
        
         | sfmike wrote:
         | find codex better by far in some cases
        
         | Xevion wrote:
         | Anthropic's models are good. Claude Code isn't good.
        
       | dboon wrote:
       | This is an unusual L for Anthropic. The unfortunate truth is that
       | the engineering in opencode is so far ahead of Claude Code.
       | Obviously, CC is a great tool, but that's more about the magic of
       | the model than the engineering of the CLI.
       | 
       | The opencode team[^1][^2] built an entire custom TUI backend that
       | supports a good subset of HTML/CSS and the TypeScript ecosystem
       | (i.e. not tied to Opencode, a generic TUI renderer). Then, they
       | built the product as a client/server, so you can use the agent
       | part of it for whatever you want, separate from the TUI. And
       | THEN, since they implemented the TUI as a generic client, they
       | could also build a web view and desktop view over the same
       | server.
       | 
       | It also doesn't flicker at 30 FPS whenever it spawns a subagent.
       | 
       | That's just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many QoL
       | features in opencode that put CC to shame. Again, CC is a magical
       | tool, but the actual nuts and bolts engineering of it is pretty
       | damning for "LLMs will write all of our code soon". I'm sorry,
       | but I'm a decent-systems-programmer-but-terminal-moron and I
       | cranked out a raymarched 3D renderer in the terminal for a Claude
       | Wrapped[^] in a weekend that...doesn't flicker. I don't mean that
       | in a look-at-me way. I mean that in a "a mid-tier systems
       | programmer isn't making these mistakes" kind of way.
       | 
       | Anyway, this is embarrassing for Anthropic. I get that opencode
       | shouldn't have been authenticating this way. I'm not saying what
       | they are doing is a rug pull, or immoral. But there's a reason
       | people use this tool instead of your first party one. Maybe let
       | those world class systems designers who created the runtime that
       | powers opencode get their hands on your TUI before nicking
       | something that is an objectively better product.
       | 
       | [^1] https://github.com/anomalyco/opentui
       | 
       | [^2] From my loose following of the development, not a monolith,
       | and the person mostly responsible for the TUI framework is
       | https://x.com/kmdrfx
       | 
       | [^3] https://spader.zone/wrapped/
        
         | IgorPartola wrote:
         | My favorite is running CC in a screen session. There if I type
         | out a prompt and then just start holding down the backspace key
         | to delete a bunch of characters, at some point they key press
         | refresh rate outruns CC's brains and it just starts acting like
         | it moved the cursor but didn't delete anything. It is an
         | embarrassing bug, but one that I suspect wouldn't be found in
         | automated testing.
        
           | eru wrote:
           | Have you tried tmux?
        
             | Ycros wrote:
             | I use tmux, I have this exact same bug in tmux. It's part
             | of why I use OpenCode and not Claude Code.
        
               | eru wrote:
               | Thanks!
        
             | _zoltan_ wrote:
             | unfortunately it's buggy in tmux as well. last night I
             | couldn't hit esc after a long, long session as it simply
             | ignored the key. doesn't happen outside of tmux.
        
           | visarga wrote:
           | Talking about embarrassing bugs, Claude chat (both web and
           | iOS apps) lately tend to lose the user message when there is
           | a network error. This happens every day to me lately. It is
           | frustrating to retype a message from memory, first time you
           | are "in the flow" second time it feels like unjust
           | punishment.
           | 
           | With all the Claude Code in the world how come they don't
           | write good enough tests to catch UI bugs? I have come to the
           | point where I preemptively copy the message in clipboard to
           | prevent retyping.
        
             | BoorishBears wrote:
             | Ctrl Z usually recovers the missing text, even across page
             | refreshes
        
             | prodigycorp wrote:
             | This is an old bug. I cant believe they haven't fixed it
             | yet. My compliments for the Claude frontend start and end
             | at artifacts.
        
           | dotancohen wrote:
           | If you want to work around this bug, Claude Code supports all
           | the readline shortcuts such as Ctrl-W and Ctrl-U.
        
         | BoiledCabbage wrote:
         | > Anyway, this is embarrassing for Anthropic.
         | 
         | Why? A few times in this thread I hear people saying "they
         | shouldn't have done this" or something similar but not given
         | any reason why.
         | 
         | Listing features you like of another product isn't a reason
         | they shouldn't have done it. It's absolutely not embarrassing,
         | and if anything it's embarrassing they didn't catch and do it
         | sooner.
        
           | ehnto wrote:
           | As a user it is because I can no longer use the subscription
           | with the greater tooling ecosystem.
           | 
           | As for Anthropic, they might not want to do this as they may
           | lose users who decide to use another provider, since without
           | the cost benefit of the subscription it doesn't make sense to
           | stay with them and also be locked into their tooling.
        
             | what wrote:
             | The subscription is for their products? If you want to use
             | their models in another product you can pay for the API
             | usage.
        
               | ehnto wrote:
               | From my perspective, I was paying for the model. This is
               | kind of a pointless distinction now though.
               | 
               | It was working and now it isn't, and the outcome is that
               | some of their customers are unhappy and might move on.
               | 
               | API access is not the same product offering as the
               | subscription, so that's probably a practical option but
               | not a comparable one.
        
               | _zoltan_ wrote:
               | you yourself admit that API access is a separate product.
               | if you want to use 3rd party tooling, pay for API access.
               | 
               | if you want to use (most likely heavily) subsidized
               | subscription plans, use their ecosystem.
               | 
               | it's that simple.
        
               | ehnto wrote:
               | No one said it was complicated, and you might be
               | imagining that I care more than I do. However if you
               | can't understand why having a feature of a paid product
               | removed is dissatisfying, then I cannot help you
               | understand any further.
               | 
               | I am surprised that anyone would think the "product" is
               | the web interface and cli tool though, the product is
               | very clearly the model. The difference in all options is
               | merely how you access it.
        
               | rovr138 wrote:
               | > having a feature of a paid product removed is
               | dissatisfying
               | 
               | It wasn't a feature. It was a loophole. They closed it.
               | 
               | There are multiple products. Besides models, there's a
               | desktop app, there's claude code. They have
               | subscriptions.
        
               | ehnto wrote:
               | Feature, attribute, loophole. I really doubt we
               | fundamentally disagree on the situation here. You can use
               | your empathy to understand why people are disappointed,
               | and I will pretend such a detail oriented thread has made
               | me feel content. Anthropic can do what they want, it's
               | their service.
        
           | gpm wrote:
           | Because the value proposition that has people pay Anthropic
           | is that it's the best LLM-coding tool around. When you're
           | competing on "we can ban you from using the model we use with
           | the same rate limits we use" everyone knows you have failed
           | to do so.
           | 
           | They might or might not currently have the best coding LLM -
           | but they're admitting that whatever moat they thought they
           | were building with claude code is worthless. The best LLM
           | meanwhile seems to change every few months.
           | 
           | They're clearly within their rights to do this, but it's also
           | clearly embarrassing and calls into question the future of
           | their business.
        
             | OGEnthusiast wrote:
             | > Because the value proposition that has people pay
             | Anthropic is that it's the best LLM-coding tool around.
             | 
             | Why not just use a local LLM instead? That way you don't
             | have to pay anyone.
        
               | pdntspa wrote:
               | Because they still suck at real-world software
               | engineering
        
               | _zoltan_ wrote:
               | none can touch any of the top models. none.
        
             | casparvitch wrote:
             | Is it that it's the best coding tool or the best model? I
             | still get the best (most accurate) results out of anthropic
             | models (but not out of CC).
        
               | gpm wrote:
               | Best coding tool is what makes users use something, a
               | good model is just a component of that.
               | 
               | I don't think "we have the current best model for coding"
               | is a particularly good business proposition - even
               | assuming it's true. Staying there looks like it's going
               | to be a matter of throwing unsustainable amounts of money
               | at training forever to stay ahead of the competition.
               | 
               | Meanwhile the coding tool part looks like it could
               | actually be sticky. People get attached to UIs. People
               | are more effective in the UIs they are experienced with.
               | There's a plausible story that codeveloping the UI and
               | model could result in a better model for that purpose
               | (because it's fine tuned on the UIs interactions).
               | 
               | And independently "Claude Code" being the best coding
               | tool around was great for brand recognition. "Open Code
               | with the Opus 4.5 backend - no not the Claude
               | subscription you can't use that - the API" won't be.
        
               | BoiledCabbage wrote:
               | I appreciate you sharing your thinking.
               | 
               | I think it's reasonable to state that at the moment Opus
               | 4.5 is the best coding model. Definitely debatable, but
               | at least I don't think it controversial to argue that, so
               | we'll start there.
               | 
               | They offer the best* model at cost via an API (likely not
               | actually at cost, but let's assume it is). They also will
               | subsidize that cost for people who use their tool. What
               | benefit do they get or why would a company want to
               | subsidize the cost of people using another tool?
               | 
               | > I don't think "we have the current best model for
               | coding" is a particularly good business proposition -
               | even assuming it's true. Staying there looks like it's
               | going to be a matter of throwing unsustainable amounts of
               | money at training forever to stay ahead of the
               | competition.
               | 
               | I happen to agree - to mee it seems tenuous having a
               | business solely based on having the best model, but
               | that's what the industry is trying to find out. Things
               | change so quickly it's hard to predict 2 years out. Maybe
               | they are first to reach XYZ tech that gives them a strong
               | long term position.
               | 
               | > Meanwhile the coding tool part looks like it could
               | actually be sticky. People get attached to UIs. People
               | are more effective in the UIs they are experienced with.
               | 
               | I agree, but it doesn't seem like that's their m.o. If
               | anything the opposite they aren't trying to get people
               | locked into their tooling. They made MCPs a standard so
               | all agents could adopt. I could be wrong, but thought
               | they also did something similar with /scripts or
               | something else. If you wanted to lock people in you'd
               | have people build an ecosystem of useful tooling and make
               | it not compatible with other agents, but they (to my
               | eyes) have been continuously putting things into the
               | community.
               | 
               | So my general view of them is that they feel they have a
               | vision with business model that doesn't require locking
               | people into their tooling ecosystem. But they're still a
               | business so don't gain from subsidizing people to use
               | other tools. If people want their models in other tools
               | use the "at-cost" APIs - why would they subsidize you to
               | use someone else's tool?
        
               | casparvitch wrote:
               | There's just not that much IP in a UI like that. Every
               | day we get articles on here that you can make an agent in
               | 200 LOCs, Yegge's gas town in 2 weeks, etc. Training the
               | model is the hard part, and what justifies a large
               | valuation (350B for anthropic, c.f. 7B for jetbrains).
        
             | matt-p wrote:
             | I think in fairness to anthropic they are winning in llms
             | right? Since 3.7 they have been better than any other lab.
        
           | dboon wrote:
           | It is embarrassing to restrict an open source tool that is
           | (IMO) a strictly and very superior piece of software from
           | using your model. It is not immoral, like I said, because
           | it's clearly against the ToC; but it's not like OC is
           | stealing anything from Anthropic by existing. It's the same
           | subscription, same usage.
           | 
           | Obviously, I have no idea what's going on internally. But it
           | appears to be an issue of vanity rather than financials or
           | theft. I don't think Anthropic is suffering harm from OC's
           | "login" method; the correct response is to figure out why
           | this other tool is better than yours and create better
           | software. Shutting down the other tool, if that's what's in
           | fact happening, is what is embarrassing.
        
             | BoiledCabbage wrote:
             | > It is embarrassing to restrict an open source tool that
             | is (IMO) a strictly and very superior piece of software
             | from using your model.
             | 
             | > Shutting down the other tool, if that's what's in fact
             | happening, is what is embarrassing.
             | 
             | To rephrase it different as I feel my question didn't land.
             | It's clear to me that you think it's embarrassing. And it's
             | clear _what_ you think is embarrassing. I 'm trying to
             | understand _why_ you think it 's embarrassing. I don't
             | think it is at all.
             | 
             | Your statements above are simply saying "X is embarrassing
             | because it's embarrassing". Yes I hear that you think it's
             | embarrassing but I don't think it is at all. Do you have a
             | reason you can give why you think it's embarrassing? I
             | think it's very wise and pretty standard to not subsidize
             | people who aren't using your tool.
             | 
             | I'm willing to consider arguments differently, but I'm not
             | hearing one. Other than "it just is because it is".
        
               | dboon wrote:
               | Why do you like or dislike Diet Coke? At some point,
               | saying what I think is embarrassing is equivalent to
               | saying why.
               | 
               | But, to accept your good faith olive branch, one more go:
               | AI is a space full of grift and real potential.
               | Anthropic's pitch is that the potential is really real.
               | So real, in fact, that it will alter what it means to
               | write software.
               | 
               | It's a big claim. But a simple way to validate it would
               | be to see if Anthropic themselves are producing more or
               | higher quality software than the rest of the industry. If
               | they aren't, something smells. The makers of the tool,
               | and such a well funded and staffed company, should be the
               | best at using it. And, well, Claude Code sucks. It's a
               | buggy mess.
               | 
               | Opencode, on the other hand, is not a buggy mess. It is
               | one of the finest pieces of software I've used in a long
               | time, and I don't mean "for a TUI". And they started
               | writing it _after_ CC was _launched_. So, to finally
               | answer your question: Opencode is a competitor in a way
               | that brings to question Anthropic 's very innermost
               | claim, the transformative nature of AI. I find it
               | embarrassing to answer this question-of-sorts by limply
               | nicking the competitor, rather than using their existence
               | as a call for self improvement. And, Christ, OC is
               | _open_. It 's open source. Anthropic could, at any time,
               | go _read_ the code and do the engineering to make CC just
               | as good. It is embarrassing to be beaten at your own game
               | and then take away the ball.
               | 
               | (If that is what is happening. Of course, this could be a
               | misunderstanding, or a careless push to production, or
               | any number of benign things. But those are uninteresting,
               | so let's assume for the sake of argument that it was
               | intentional).
        
               | BoiledCabbage wrote:
               | Thanks, while we in the end may not agree - I do feel I
               | understand your thinking now. Also agreed, we've probably
               | reached the fruitful end of this discussion and this will
               | be my last reply on it. I'll explain my thoughts
               | similarly as you.
               | 
               | To me it seems more akin to someone saying "I'm launching
               | a restaurant. I'll give you a free meal if you come and
               | give me feedback on the dish, the decor, service...".
               | This happens for a bit, then after a while people start
               | coming in taking the free plate and going and eating it
               | at a different restaurant.
               | 
               | To me it seems pretty reasonable to say "If you're taking
               | the free meal you have to eat it here and give feedback".
               | 
               | That said, I do acknowledge you see it very differently
               | and given how you see it I understand why you feel it's
               | embarrassing.
               | 
               | Thanks for the discussion.
        
               | _bobm wrote:
               | But you are not having a free meal lunch are you? You
               | _are paying_ for your meal.
               | 
               | Worse: you are the meal as well.
               | 
               | Do you see this?
        
               | rocqua wrote:
               | If your value proposition is: do X, and then you have to
               | take action against an open source competitor for doing X
               | better, that shows that you were beaten at the thing you
               | tried very hard at, by people with way fewer resources.
               | 
               | I can see why you would call that embarrassing.
        
               | kelnos wrote:
               | The competitor is not "doing X better"; it's more
               | complicated than that.
               | 
               | CC isn't just the TUI tool. It's also the LLM behind it.
               | OC may have built a better TUI tool, but it's useless
               | without an LLM behind it. Anthropic is certainly within
               | their rights to tell people they can only integrate their
               | models certain ways.
               | 
               | And as for why this isn't embarrassing, consider that OC
               | can focus 100% of their efforts on their coding tool.
               | Anthropic has a lot of other balls in the air, and must
               | do so to remain relevant and competitive. They're just
               | not comparable businesses.
        
               | Draiken wrote:
               | > CC isn't just the TUI tool. It's also the LLM behind
               | it.
               | 
               | No, Claude Code is literally the TUI tool. The LLMs
               | behind are the models. You can use different models
               | within the same TUI tool, even CC allows that, regardless
               | of the restriction of only using their models (because
               | they chose to do that).
               | 
               | > consider that OC can focus 100% of their efforts on
               | their coding tool.
               | 
               | And they have billions of dollars to hire full teams of
               | developers to focus on it. Yet they don't.
               | 
               | They want to give Claude Code an advantage because they
               | don't want to invest as much in it and still "win", while
               | they're in a position to do so. This is very similar to
               | Apple forcing developers to use their apps because they
               | can, not because it's better. With the caveat that
               | Anthropic doesn't have a consolidated monopoly like
               | Apple.
               | 
               | Can they do that? Yes.
               | 
               | Should they do that? It's a matter of opinion. I think
               | it's a bad move.
               | 
               | Is it embarrassing? Yes. It shows they're admitting their
               | solution is worse and changing the rules of the game to
               | tilt it in their favor while offering an inferior
               | product. They essentially don't want to compete, they
               | want to force people to use their solution due to
               | pricing, not the quality of their product.
        
               | yencabulator wrote:
               | Claude Code is more than the TUI, it's the prompts, the
               | agentic loop, and tools, all made to cooperate well with
               | the LLM powering it. If you use Claude Code over a longer
               | period of time you'll notice Anthropic changing the
               | tooling and prompts underneath it to make it work better.
               | By now, the model is tuned to their prompts, tools etc.
        
           | anhner wrote:
           | "Leave the multibillion dollar company alone!"
        
           | wiseowise wrote:
           | It is embarrassing, because it means they're afraid of
           | competition. If CC was so great, at least a fraction of they
           | sell it, they wouldn't need to do it.
        
           | llmslave2 wrote:
           | It's embarrassing because they use Claude Code to build all
           | of their software and they can't write decent software to
           | save their lives. Their software quality is embarrassing,
           | basically Microsoft tier, which calls into question both the
           | effectiveness of their AI products and Agentic workflows.
           | 
           | Like seriously, the creator of CC claims to run 10
           | simultaneous agents at once. We sure can tell bud.
        
           | rockatanescu wrote:
           | The Claude plans allow you to send a number of messages to
           | Anthropic models in a specific interval without incurring any
           | extra costs. From Anthropic's "About Claude's Max Plan Usage"
           | page:
           | 
           | > The number of messages you can send per session will vary
           | based on the length of your messages, including the size of
           | files you attach, the length of current conversation, and the
           | model or feature you use. Your session-based usage limit will
           | reset every five hours. If your conversations are relatively
           | short and use a less compute-intensive model, with the Max
           | plan at 5x more usage, you can expect to send at least 225
           | messages every five hours, and with the Max plan at 20x more
           | usage, at least 900 messages every five hours, often more
           | depending on message length, conversation length, and
           | Claude's current capacity.
           | 
           | So it's not a "Claude Code" subscription, it's a "Claude"
           | subscription.
           | 
           | The only piece of information that might suggest that there
           | are any restrictions to using your subscription to access the
           | models is the part of the Pro plan description that says
           | "Access Claude Code on the web and in your terminal" and the
           | Max plan description that says "Everything in Pro".
        
         | dcre wrote:
         | I've used both CC and OpenCode quite a bit and while I like
         | both and especially appreciate the work around OpenTUI,
         | experience-wise I see almost no difference between the two.
         | Maybe it's because my computer is fast and I use Ghostty, but I
         | don't experience any flickering in CC. Testing now, I see
         | typing is slightly less responsive in CC (very slightly: I
         | never noticed until I was testing it on purpose).
         | 
         | We will see whether OpenCode's architecture lets them move
         | faster while working on the desktop and TUI versions in
         | parallel, but it's so early -- you can't say that vision has
         | been borne out yet.
        
         | NetOpWibby wrote:
         | inb4 Anthropic acquires Opencode
        
           | dboon wrote:
           | I actually wouldn't be _that_ surprised by this. I 'd be more
           | surprised at the OC people folding (not the right word, but
           | you get it) on some pretty heavy ambitions in favor of an
           | acquisition.
        
             | yieldcrv wrote:
             | the right word, keeping with card playing and poker terms
             | would be book a win or win the hand, scoop the pot
        
         | xpe wrote:
         | Update: Ah, I see this part: "This credential is only
         | authorized for use with Claude Code and cannot be used for
         | other API requests."
         | 
         | Old comment for posterity: How do we know this was a
         | strategy/policy decision versus just an engineering change?
         | (Maybe the answer is obvious, but I haven't seen the source for
         | it yet.) I skimmed the GitHub issue, but I didn't see
         | discussion about _why_ this change happened. I don 't mean just
         | the technical change; I mean _why_ Anthropic did it. Did I miss
         | something?
        
         | ChicagoDave wrote:
         | Or just maybe submit feature requests instead of backdooring a
         | closed source system.
        
           | oblio wrote:
           | All the TUI agents are awful at scrolling. I'm on Ubuntu
           | 24.04 and both Claude Code and Gemini CLI absolutely destroy
           | scrolling. I've tested Claude Code in the VS Code and it's
           | better there, but in the Gnome Terminal it's plain unusable.
           | 
           | And a lot of people are reporting scrolling issues.
           | 
           | As someone was saying, it's like they don't have access to
           | the world's best coding LLM to debug these issues.
        
             | ChicagoDave wrote:
             | I use Claude Code every day and it works perfectly fine
             | outside of a few bugs (they broke ESC interrupt in 2.1).
             | 
             | I just don't understand the misplaced anger at breaking TOS
             | (even for a good reason) and getting slapped down.
             | 
             | Like what did anyone think would happen?
             | 
             | We all want these tools and companies to succeed. Anthropic
             | needs to find profit in a few years. It's in all of our
             | best interests to augment that success, not bitch because
             | they're not doing it your way.
        
               | oblio wrote:
               | > We all want these tools and companies to succeed.
               | Anthropic needs to find profit in a few years. It's in
               | all of our best interests to augment that success, not
               | bitch because they're not doing it your way.
               | 
               | Considering they're destroying a lot of fields of
               | industry, I'm not sure I want them to succeed. Are we
               | sure they're making the world a better place?
               | 
               | Or are they just concentrating wealth, like Google, Meta,
               | Microsoft, Amazon, Uber, Doordash, Airbnb and all the
               | other holy-tech grails in the last 20 years?
               | 
               | Our lives are more convenient than they were 20 years ago
               | and probably poorer and more stressful.
        
           | wiseowise wrote:
           | Simping for closed source software? Tsk, tsk.
        
         | slekker wrote:
         | How much do you use AI in your day? Are you a heavy user?
         | Asking because your comment has a lot of "LLM mannerism"
        
           | dboon wrote:
           | No, it doesn't.
        
         | alexeiz wrote:
         | > The unfortunate truth is that the engineering in opencode is
         | so far ahead of Claude Code.
         | 
         | If only Claude Code developers had access to a powerful LLM
         | that would allow them to close the engineering gap. Oh, wait...
        
           | wiseowise wrote:
           | It's a pure marketing. When will people understand that?
        
           | llmslave2 wrote:
           | Anthropic developers run 10 Claude Code instances at once,
           | with unlimited access to the best models.
        
         | cat-whisperer wrote:
         | I am curious, I haven't faced any major issues using claude
         | code in my daily workflow. Never noticed any flickering either.
         | 
         | Why do you think opencode > CC? what are some
         | productivity/practical implications?
        
           | azuanrb wrote:
           | Opencode has a web UI, so I can open it on my laptop and then
           | resume the same session on the web from my phone through
           | Tailscale. It's pretty handy from time to time and takes
           | almost zero effort from me.
           | 
           | The flickering is still happening to me. It's less frequent
           | than before, but still does for long/big sessions.
        
         | satvikpendem wrote:
         | > _Anyway, this is embarrassing for Anthropic. I get that
         | opencode shouldn 't have been authenticating this way. I'm not
         | saying what they are doing is a rug pull, or immoral. But
         | there's a reason people use this tool instead of your first
         | party one. Maybe let those world class systems designers who
         | created the runtime that powers opencode get their hands on
         | your TUI before nicking something that is an objectively better
         | product._
         | 
         | This is nothing new, they pulled Claude models from the Trae
         | editor over "security concerns." It seems like Anthropic are
         | too pearl-clutching in comparison to other companies, and it
         | makes sense given they started in response to thinking OpenAI
         | was not safety oriented enough.
        
         | vinhnx wrote:
         | > The unfortunate truth is that the engineering in opencode is
         | so far ahead of Claude Code
         | 
         | I'm curious, what made you think of that?
        
         | createaccount99 wrote:
         | > unusual L for Anthropic
         | 
         | Not unusual, not for Anthropic.
        
         | kristianp wrote:
         | Interesting that [1] is 30% zig as well as mostly typescript.
         | That's a lot of native code for something that runs in a
         | terminal (i.e. no graphical code required).
        
       | honeyspoon wrote:
       | end of an era
        
       | galsjel wrote:
       | Just open source Claude Code and maybe it gets supported by
       | fostering a community... Oh wait, no lock in? Sorry there's no
       | stakeholder value in that.
        
       | weird-eye-issue wrote:
       | The API is not banned only using the Claude Code subscription is
       | 
       | I actually tried this several months back to do a regular API
       | request using the CC subscription token and it gave the same
       | error message
       | 
       | So this software must have been pretending to be Claude Code in
       | order to get around that
       | 
       | A Claude Code subscription should not work with other software, I
       | think this is totally fair
        
         | prydt wrote:
         | Came here to say this. Using opencode with the API works fine.
        
           | ashishgupta2209 wrote:
           | Same
        
         | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
         | Yeah, you shouldn't infringe the copywrite of a tool written by
         | a company which is built off of copywrite infringement.
        
           | weird-eye-issue wrote:
           | First of all you mean "copyright". Second of all this has
           | literally nothing to do with copyright
        
         | creativeSlumber wrote:
         | > A Claude Code subscription should not work with other
         | software.
         | 
         | why not though? aren't you paying for the model usage
         | regardless of the client you use?
        
           | weird-eye-issue wrote:
           | That's not up to you or me. I think it's pretty clear by the
           | phrase "Claude Code subscription" that it's meant for only
           | "Claude Code". Why are you confused?
           | 
           | This could be so easily abused by companies who spend
           | thousands of dollars per month for API costs you could just
           | reverse engineer it and use the subscription tokens to get
           | that down to a few hundred
        
             | gpm wrote:
             | That phrase isn't the official one. It's "The Max Plan"
             | which "combines Claude Desktop and mobile apps and Claude
             | Code in one subscription".
        
               | fastball wrote:
               | Yes, so... pretty clearly not OpenCode.
        
               | weird-eye-issue wrote:
               | Yeah, exactly.
        
             | casparvitch wrote:
             | IDK if Anthropic wants to offer a service at below cost, I
             | don't think they should gate keep which client you access
             | that service over. Or in other terms, I won't use a service
             | that locks me into a client I don't like.
        
               | BoiledCabbage wrote:
               | > IDK if Anthropic wants to offer a service at below
               | cost, I don't think they should gate keep which client
               | you access that service over.
               | 
               | Are you going to say why you think they shouldn't? You
               | didn't give a reason.
        
               | firloop wrote:
               | How do you draw that conclusion? If Anthropic wants to
               | offer a service at below cost, they seem a lot more
               | justified in restricting how and where they subsidize
               | usage.
        
               | casparvitch wrote:
               | Yeah fair, I could've chosen better words. My conclusion
               | is: "I don't want to pay for that", not "they shouldn't
               | be able to do that".
        
               | renewiltord wrote:
               | That seems mutual. They don't want you to use this
               | service with an arbitrary client and you don't want to
               | use this service that won't allow an arbitrary client. So
               | both of you don't want the relationship. Seems fine.
               | 
               | For my part, I'm fine understanding that bundling allows
               | for discounting and I would prefer to enable that.
        
               | weird-eye-issue wrote:
               | > Or in other terms, I won't use a service that locks me
               | into a client I don't like.
               | 
               | Then don't! Or just use the API which doesn't lock you
               | into any client.
        
             | potamic wrote:
             | I don't think they are confused. They are simply
             | challenging the assertion that the model should not work
             | with other software. Which is fair because there is a lot
             | of precedent around whether a service can dictate how it
             | must be consumed. It's not a simple answer and there are
             | good reasons for both sides. Whichever path we take will
             | have wide consequences and shape our future in a very
             | distinct way. So it is an important decision, and
             | ultimately up to us, as a society to influence and guide.
        
               | weird-eye-issue wrote:
               | "challenging the assertion that the model should not work
               | with other software"
               | 
               | This has nothing to do with "the model". You can use "the
               | models" through the API for anything.
               | 
               | This has to do with access to a specific product being
               | abused to then get low-cost API access for other use
               | cases
        
             | bandrami wrote:
             | Can I script and scrape Claude Code to provide the exact
             | same data for consumption by the banned client? (This
             | sounds like an interesting challenge for Claude Code to
             | try...)
        
               | weird-eye-issue wrote:
               | Yes they even offer an SDK for it now so "scraping" is
               | not required
        
               | davely wrote:
               | Claude Code provides a headless mode that you can do this
               | exact same thing with:
               | 
               | $ claude -p "fix the eslint in file XYZ"
        
             | iwontberude wrote:
             | It's like saying Netflix is wrong to require an official
             | Netflix client to access their service. Total dud of an
             | argument if you ask me.
        
               | tadfisher wrote:
               | Well, they are wrong, and the argument is still a dud.
        
               | weird-eye-issue wrote:
               | Netflix would not even exist if you could just freely
               | download all of the media to your computer and play it
               | anytime because of licensing agreements and other
               | factors. So you can think that they are wrong but that's
               | not really rooted in reality or practicality.
        
               | tadfisher wrote:
               | That is possible, was always possible, and will continue
               | to be possible, judging by the availability of 4K rips
               | available via piracy.
        
           | conception wrote:
           | But they get telemetry, feedback, good will, etc. That's one
           | reason why usage is discounted to a subscription fee.
        
             | CuriouslyC wrote:
             | Good will, huh?
        
               | conception wrote:
               | You don't think Claude Code has generated good will for
               | Anthropic? People just liking a brand is powerful.
        
               | CuriouslyC wrote:
               | I don't think this move is generating good will.
        
             | adastra22 wrote:
             | They don't get any telemetry or feedback data from me, as
             | I've turned all that off. So why should I be limited to CC?
        
               | mercanlIl wrote:
               | If you don't want to use CC, just use the API
        
           | nebezb wrote:
           | > aren't you paying for the model usage
           | 
           | No, you're paying for "Claude Code" usage.
        
           | cortesoft wrote:
           | No, you are paying to use Claude code... it uses the model
           | underneath, but you aren't paying for raw model usage. For
           | whatever reason, Anthropic thinks this is the best way to
           | divide up their market.
           | 
           | They want to charge more for direct access to the model.
        
             | JimmaDaRustla wrote:
             | > No, you are paying to use Claude code
             | 
             | Why would anyone pay a subscription for barebones LLM
             | agent?
             | 
             | You can beat that drum all you want, but you know it's
             | bullshit. People pay the subscription for the AI, not the
             | tool that consumes it. That tool being crap is why everyone
             | started using third-party tools.
             | 
             | The reason they are blocking third-party usage is they want
             | developers to use only their models and no competitors.
        
         | nextaccountic wrote:
         | Is Claude Code still available on IDEs through ACP?
         | 
         | Like https://zed.dev/docs/ai/external-agents
        
           | lemming wrote:
           | Should be, yes - ACP is basically just a different way of
           | invoking the agent, so you're still using Claude Code. It's
           | alternative clients like OpenCode, the CharmBracelet one and
           | pi which will be affected - they basically reimplement the
           | agent part and just call the API directly.
        
           | Syzygies wrote:
           | Yes. I've been using it today with Zed (a mind-blowing
           | editor, by the way).
           | 
           | One must use an API key to work through Zed, but my Max
           | subscription can be used with Claude Code as an external
           | agent via Zed ACP. And there's some integration; it's a
           | better experience than Claude Code in a terminal next to file
           | viewing in an editor.
        
         | protocolture wrote:
         | >A Claude Code subscription should not work with other
         | software, I think this is totally fair
         | 
         | Strongly disagree. They are just trying to moat.
        
           | iwontberude wrote:
           | It's a private API. What part of this is hard to understand?
           | This is why you don't code against undocumented APIs with no
           | contract. It's self destructive.
        
         | sfmike wrote:
         | but if something is used in CLI it makes sense it would be in
         | order to be used with other things in the CLI
        
         | JimmaDaRustla wrote:
         | > A Claude Code subscription should not work with other
         | software, I think this is totally fair
         | 
         | Why the hell not? What an L take - if I pay a subscription fee
         | for an API, I should be able to use that API however I want. If
         | they're forcing users to only consume their APIs with a
         | proprietary piece of software, it really begs what's in that
         | software that makes it valuable to them. Seems like there's
         | something nefarious involved.
        
       | planckscnst wrote:
       | I've been (adding an OpenCode feature that allows the LLM to edit
       | its own context)[1] and trying to debug an issue with the
       | Anthropic API because I'm calling it with missing fields that it
       | expects. I hope my multiple erronious API calls aren't what
       | triggered this decision
       | 
       | [1]:
       | https://github.com/Vibecodelicious/opencode/tree/surgical_co...
        
       | brainless wrote:
       | I know this will sound strange, but SOTA model companies will
       | eventually allow subscription based usage through third-party
       | tools. For any usage whatsoever.
       | 
       | Models are pretty much democratized. I use Claude Code and
       | opencode and I get more work done these days with GLM or Grok
       | Code (using opencode). Z.ai (GLM) subscription is so worth it.
       | 
       | Also, mixing models, small and large ones, is the way to go.
       | Different models from different providers. This is not like cloud
       | infra where you need to plan the infra use. Models are pretty
       | much text in, text out (let's say for text only models). The
       | minor differences in API are easy to work with.
        
         | substackreader wrote:
         | They already do it's called the API
        
         | MeetingsBrowser wrote:
         | Wouldn't this mean SOTA model companies are incentivized _not_
         | to allow subscriptions through third parties?
         | 
         | If all the models are interchangeable at the API layer,
         | wouldn't they be incentivized to add value at the next level up
         | and lock people in there to prevent customers from moving to
         | competitors on a whim.
        
           | brainless wrote:
           | I do not know what that next level is to be honest. Web
           | search, crawler, code execution, etc. can all be easily added
           | on the agent side. And some of the small models are so good
           | when the context is small that being locked into one provider
           | makes no sense. I would rather build a heavy multi-agent
           | solution, using Gemini, GLM, Sonnet, Haiku, GPT, and even use
           | BERT, GlinER and other models for specific tasks. Low cost,
           | no lock-in, still get high quality output.
        
           | Majromax wrote:
           | > If all the models are interchangeable at the API layer,
           | wouldn't they be incentivized to add value at the next level
           | up
           | 
           | Just the other day, a 2016 article was reposted here
           | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46514816] on the 'stack
           | fallacy', where companies who are experts in their domain
           | repeatedly try and fail to 'move up the value chain' by
           | offering higher-level products or services. The fallacy is
           | that these companies underestimate the essential compexities
           | of the higher-level and approach the problem with arrogance.
           | 
           | That would seem to apply here. Why should a model-building
           | company have any unique skill at building higher-level
           | integration?
           | 
           | If their edge comes from having the best model, they should
           | commoditize the complement and make it as easy as possible
           | for everyone to use (and pay for) their model. The standard
           | API allows them to do just this, offering 'free' benefits
           | from community integrations and multi-domain tasks.
           | 
           | If their edge does not come from the model - if the models
           | are interchangeable in performance and not just API - then
           | the company will have deeper problems justifying its existing
           | investments and securing more funding. A moat of high-level
           | features might help plug a few leaks, but this entire field
           | is too new to have the kind of legacy clients that keep old
           | firms like IBM around.
        
         | thorum wrote:
         | AI labs are not charities and there is no way to make money
         | offering unlimited access to SOTA LLMs. Even as costs drop,
         | that will continue to be true for the best models in 2027, 2028
         | etc. - as demonstrated by the fact that CPU time still costs
         | money. The current offerings are propped up by a VC bubble and
         | not sustainable.
        
           | brainless wrote:
           | I agree but that is not the issue. See the really "large"
           | models are great at a few things but they are not needed for
           | daily tasks, including most coding tasks. Claude Code itself
           | uses Haiku for a lot of tasks.
           | 
           | The non-SOTA companies will eat more of this pie and squeeze
           | more value out of the SOTA companies.
        
       | planet_1649c wrote:
       | Damn :((
        
       | sergiotapia wrote:
       | Switched to the z.ai coding plan, and used the GLM 4.7 model for
       | a few complex changes since posting this, and it works really
       | well.
       | 
       | I don't think I will renew Anthropic, the open models have
       | reached an inflection point.
        
       | casparvitch wrote:
       | Maybe Anthropic saw Yegge's gas town concept and got scared off?
        
         | striking wrote:
         | I believe Gas Town uses Claude Code under the hood, still? Just
         | with some really wild hooks
        
           | casparvitch wrote:
           | Oh you mean literally claude code, not some hack like
           | opencode? I guess that makes sense yeah, given the tmux
           | interface.
        
             | RamtinJ95 wrote:
             | I get calling opencode a hack, but actually looking at the
             | product claude code is the hack compared to opencode for
             | real
        
       | jiangplus wrote:
       | This reminds me of when Anthropic cut first-party access to
       | Claude models in Windsurf as they were about to be acquired by
       | Google.
       | 
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTCoding/comments/1l2y2kh/anth...
        
         | TiredOfLife wrote:
         | They cut access because OpenAI was about to buy Windsurf. The
         | moment that deal was cancelled access was returned.
        
       | outlier99 wrote:
       | they didn't even ban non claude code clients they just banned
       | certain tool names that opencode uses...
       | 
       | https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/issues/7410#issuecomme...
        
       | planet_1649c wrote:
       | Cancelled my claude subscription over it. Opencode is miles ahead
       | of any coding tools. Will stick to using it rather than claude.
       | Other models / other ways to access claude exists.
        
         | Mave83 wrote:
         | same here, will cancle the subscription and move away from this
         | nonsense. I want to use their LLM, not their CLI.
        
       | ewoodrich wrote:
       | Ugh, well at least this was the nudge I needed to cancel my
       | Claude Pro subscription... I've already had a bad taste in my
       | mouth watching the rate limits on the plan get worse and worse
       | since I first subscribed and I have a few other subscriptions to
       | fall back on while I've been evaluating different options. I
       | literally never use the regular Claude Chat web UI either, that's
       | pretty much 100% Gemini since I get it via my Google One plan.
       | 
       | OpenCode makes me feel a lot better knowing that my workflow
       | isn't completely dependent on single vendor lock-in, and I
       | generally prefer the UX to Claude Code anyway.
        
       | lemming wrote:
       | This will piss a lot of people off, and seems like a strange
       | move. I get that this was always a hack and against the ToS. But
       | I've been paying Anthropic money every month to do exactly what I
       | would have done with Claude Code, but in another harness that I
       | like better. All they've achieved here is that I am no longer
       | giving them money. Their per-token pricing is really expensive
       | compared to OpenAI, and I like the results from the OpenAI models
       | better too, they're just very slow.
       | 
       | Here's a good benchmark from the brokk team showing the
       | performance per dollar, GPT-5.1 is around half the price of Opus
       | 4.5 for the same performance, it just takes twice as long.
       | 
       | https://brokk.ai/power-ranking?dataset=openround&models=flas...
       | 
       | So as of today, my money is going to OpenAI instead of Anthropic.
       | They probably don't care though, I suspect that not many users
       | are sufficiently keen on alternative harnesses to make a
       | difference to their finances. But by the same token (ha ha), why
       | enforce this? I don't understand why it's so important to them
       | that I'm using Claude Code instead of something else.
        
         | gbear605 wrote:
         | Presumably Claude Code is a loss leader to try to lock you into
         | their ecosystem or at least get you to exclusive associate "AI"
         | with "Claude". So if it's not achieving those goals, they'd
         | prefer if you use OpenAI instead.
        
           | wiether wrote:
           | That's my understanding and that's what I see happening at
           | some places.
           | 
           | People got a CC sub, invest on the whole tooling around CC
           | (skills and whatnot) and once they're a few weeks/months in,
           | they'll need a lot of convincing to even try something else.
           | 
           | And given how often CC itself changes and they need to keep
           | up with it, that's even worse. It's not just not wanting to
           | get out of your confort zone, it's just trying to keep up
           | with your current tools. Now if you also have to try a new
           | tool every other day, the 10x productivity improvements
           | claimed won't be enough to cover the lack of actual working
           | hours you'll be left with in a week.
        
         | fragmede wrote:
         | > it just takes twice as long.
         | 
         | but time is also money. Personally if I could pay more money to
         | get answers faster, I'd pay double.
        
       | casparvitch wrote:
       | Unsure of the other competition, but I can vouch for
       | synthetic.new's subscription for GLM (+ other open models). Note
       | quite as accurate as Anthropic's models but good enough for
       | basically everything I do.
        
       | viraptor wrote:
       | And it already has a workaround.
       | https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/issues/7410#issuecomme...
       | 
       | I really don't understand why they thought this is a good idea. I
       | mean I know why they wish to do this, but it's obviously not
       | going to last.
        
       | articunoJones wrote:
       | fork OC and use anthropics agent SDK that allows you to build on
       | top of your subscription
       | 
       | The Agent SDK can piggyback on your existing Claude Code
       | authentication
       | 
       | https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/quickstart
        
       | oldhead wrote:
       | This headline is misleading. EDIT: Or rather was, at it has now
       | been edited to be accurate.
       | 
       | You can still bring your own Anthropic API key and use Claude in
       | OpenCode.
       | 
       | What you can no longer do is reverse engineer undocumented
       | Anthropic APIs and spoof being a Claude Code client to use an
       | OAuth token from a subscription-based Anthropic account.
       | 
       | This really sucks for people who want a thriving competitive
       | market of open source harnesses since BYOK API tokens mean paying
       | a substantial premium to use anything but Anthropic's official
       | clients.
       | 
       | But it's hard to say it's surprising or a scandal, or anything
       | terribly different from what tons of other companies have done in
       | the past. I'd personally advise people to expect everything about
       | using frontier coding models becoming much more pay-to-play.
        
         | planckscnst wrote:
         | The API key is not a subscription. The title says subscriptions
         | are blocked from using third-party tools. Or am I
         | misunderstanding?
        
           | oldhead wrote:
           | Headline's been edited since my post. It previously said
           | something along the lines of "Anthropic bans API use in
           | OpenCode CLI"
        
         | barnabee wrote:
         | The ideal endgame is that AI lets us build tools that make it
         | impossible to tell what application or device is using their
         | APIs and everything becomes open to third party clients whether
         | they like it or not.
        
       | StarterPro wrote:
       | Why don't you just ask Claude Code to write you a workaround? I'm
       | sure if you say "fix plz" enough times, it'll work eventually.
        
       | pat_erichsen wrote:
       | This situation feels like a +1 for Agent Client Protocol (ACP)
       | [1].
       | 
       | In ACP, you auth directly to the underlying agent (eg Claude Code
       | SDK) rather than a third-party tool (eg OpenCode) that then calls
       | an inference endpoint on your behalf. If you're logged into
       | Claude Code, you're already logged into Claude Code through any
       | ACP client.
       | 
       | [1] https://agentclientprotocol.com/overview/agents
        
         | articunoJones wrote:
         | It works like that for the agent SDK, you could connect open
         | code to that
        
       | ares623 wrote:
       | A rare glimpse into the enshittification that is to come to these
       | tools. It's only a matter of time.
        
       | Sewer56 wrote:
       | Here's how to get a refund on the website (all automated):
       | 
       | 1. Profile Icon -> Get Help
       | 
       | 2. Send us a Message
       | 
       | 3. Click 'Refund'
       | 
       | Big corpos only talk money, so it's the best you could do in this
       | situation.
       | 
       | If you can't refund, and need to wait till sub runs out after
       | cancelling, go to the OpenCode repo and rename your tools so they
       | start with capital letters. That'll work around it. They just
       | match on lowercase tool names of standard tools.
        
         | tyfon wrote:
         | That actually worked since I subscribed a few days ago
         | specifically to try open code.
         | 
         | "Your subscription has been canceled and your refund is on the
         | way. Please allow 5-10 business days for the funds to appear in
         | your account."
        
         | everfrustrated wrote:
         | Really useful thanks!
         | 
         | I signed up thinking Claude Code was an IDE and really
         | disappointed with it. Their plugin for vscode is complete
         | trash. Way over hyped. Their models are good but I can get that
         | through other ways.
        
       | dfabulich wrote:
       | For folks not following the drama: Anthropic's $200/month
       | subscription for Claude Code is _much_ cheaper than Anthropic 's
       | pay-as-you-go API. In a month of Claude Code, it's easy to use so
       | many LLM tokens that it would have cost you more than $1,000 if
       | you'd paid via the API.
       | 
       | Why is Anthropic offering such favorable pricing to subscribers?
       | I dunno. But they _really_ want you to use the Claude Code(tm)
       | CLI with that subscription, not the open-source OpenCode CLI.
       | They want OpenCode users to pay API prices, which could be 5x or
       | more.
       | 
       | So, of course, OpenCode has implemented a workaround, so that
       | folks paying "only" $200/month can use their preferred OpenCode
       | CLI at Anthropic's all-you-can-eat token buffet.
       | 
       | https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/issues/7410#issuecomme...
       | 
       | Everything about this is ridiculous, and it's all Anthropic's
       | fault. Anthropic shouldn't _have_ an all-you-can-eat plan for
       | $200 when their pay-as-you-go plan would cost more than $1,000+
       | for comparable usage. Their subscription plans should just sell
       | you API credits at, like, 20% off.
       | 
       | More importantly, Anthropic should have open sourced their Claude
       | Code CLI a year ago. (They can and should just open source it
       | now.)
        
         | casparvitch wrote:
         | I guess one issue is that you pay $200/month whether you use it
         | or not. Potentially this could be better for Anthropic. What
         | was not necessarily foreseeable (ok maybe it was) back when
         | that started was that users have invented all kinds of ways to
         | supervise their agents to be as efficient as possible. If they
         | control the client, you can't do that.
        
           | isolli wrote:
           | Why is supervising one's agents to be as efficient as
           | possible a problem for Anthropic?
        
             | casparvitch wrote:
             | More inference = more cost (to Anthropic)
        
             | dpark wrote:
             | When people say _efficient_ here, they mean cost efficient,
             | extracting as much work per dollar from Anthropic as
             | possible. This is the opposite of Anthropic's view of
             | efficiency, which would be providing the minimal amount of
             | service for the most amount of money.
        
           | vidarh wrote:
           | I can easily get Claude Code to run for 8-10 hours
           | unsupervised without stopping with sub-agents entirely within
           | Claude Code.
           | 
           | I think it is more likely that if you stick with Claude Code,
           | then you are more likely to stick with Opus/Sonnet, whereas
           | if you use a third party CLI you might be more likely to mix
           | and match or switch away entirely. It's in their interest to
           | get you invested in their tooling.
        
             | KronisLV wrote:
             | > if you use a third party CLI you might be more likely to
             | mix and match or switch away entirely.
             | 
             | I really like doing this, be it with OpenCode or Copilot or
             | Cline/RooCode/KiloCode: I do have a Cerebras Code
             | subscription (50 USD a month for _a lot_ of tokens but only
             | an okayish model) whereas the rest I use by paying per-
             | token.
             | 
             | Monthly spend ends up being somewhere between 100-150 USD
             | total, obviously depending on what I do and the proportion
             | of simple vs complex tasks.
             | 
             | If Sonnet isn't great for a given task, I can go for GPT-5
             | or Gemini 3.
        
               | vidarh wrote:
               | I don't do this much because I _really_ like Opus 4.5,
               | and so far I haven 't hit the limits on the $200
               | subscription much, but I do have some projects where I
               | might need far higher limits.
               | 
               | As a matter of principle, I really would like the
               | flexibility though, as while I love Opus _now_ , who
               | knows which model I will prefer next month.
        
             | mlrtime wrote:
             | On the flip side I started using Claude with other LLMs
             | (openai) because my Pro sub gets maxed out quickly and I
             | want a cheaper alternative to finish a project.
             | 
             | I just use claude code proxy or litellm and set the
             | ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL to my proxy and chose another LLM.
        
               | vidarh wrote:
               | That would seem to be a very good reason for them to make
               | Claude Code good enough that people would prefer doing
               | that over the inverse...
               | 
               | But also, they're a bit schizophrenic about what they
               | want Claude Code to be, given you can stream JSON to/from
               | Claude Code to use it as a headless backend _including
               | with your subscriptions_.
        
             | j45 wrote:
             | Multi model is the way of the future though as much as I
             | like and prefer Anthropic.
        
             | dabernathy89 wrote:
             | I've yet to come up with a workflow where I would want
             | Claude to do this much work... unless I had an extremely
             | detailed spec defined for it. How do you ensure it doesn't
             | go off the rails?
        
               | AnotherGoodName wrote:
               | You pretty much just said it. Define an extremely
               | detailed spec. I have one that's five .md files to
               | iteratively churn through. It had to be split into that
               | many files since i don't want to break context length
               | limits on the AI.
        
           | ignat980 wrote:
           | What kind of ways to supervise?
        
             | denysvitali wrote:
             | ralph-loop & co
        
           | labcomputer wrote:
           | > I guess one issue is that you pay $200/month whether you
           | use it or not.
           | 
           | I can easily churn through $100 in an 8 hour work day with
           | API billing. $200/month seems like an incredibly good deal,
           | even if they apply some throttling.
        
         | hahahahhaah wrote:
         | Anthropic and all AI are playing chicken with each other. You
         | need to win userbase and that is worth losing money for but if
         | you sell discount tokens for Loveable clones to profit from
         | that is not in your interest.
         | 
         | Anthropic is futher complicated by mission.
        
         | 3abiton wrote:
         | > Why is Anthropic offering such favorable pricing to
         | subscribers? I dunno. But they _really_ want you to use the
         | Claude Code(tm) CLI with that subscription, not the open-source
         | OpenCode CLI.
         | 
         | Because they are harvesting all the data they can harvest
         | through CLI to train further models. API access in contrast
         | provides much more limited data
        
           | eli wrote:
           | Claude Code only trains on data if you opt in
        
             | CSSer wrote:
             | I used to be less cynical, but I could see them not
             | honoring that, legal or not. The real answer, regardless of
             | how you feel about that conversation, is that Claude Code,
             | not any model, is the product.
        
               | eli wrote:
               | I couldn't. Aside from violating laws in various
               | countries and opening them up to lawsuits, it would be
               | extremely bad for their enterprise business if they were
               | caught stealing user data.
        
               | jrvarela56 wrote:
               | If they believe it would get them AGI they would risk it.
        
               | grumbelbart2 wrote:
               | Maybe. But the data is there, imagine financial troubles,
               | someone buys in and uses the data for whatever they want.
               | Much like 23andme. If you want something to stay a
               | secret, you don't send it to that LLM, or you use a zero-
               | retention contract.
        
               | eli wrote:
               | If your threat model is "vendor willing to ignore
               | contracts and laws to steal your data" I can't see how a
               | zero-retention contract helps.
        
               | tsimionescu wrote:
               | You don't have to imagine, you can see it happening all
               | the time. Even huge corps like FB have been already fined
               | for ignoring user consent laws for data tracking, and
               | thousands of smaller ones are obviously ignoring explicit
               | opt in requirements in the GDPR at least.
        
             | adastra22 wrote:
             | They switched to opt out, with some extra dark patterns to
             | convert people who already opted out into opting in.
        
               | throwa356262 wrote:
               | I did not know that. Could you elaborate?
        
               | adastra22 wrote:
               | New users now have to opt-out of training on their data -
               | it is enabled by default. For existing users, during the
               | transition they updated their terms and let you know
               | about the change in policy, giving you an option to opt-
               | in or opt-out. Opt-in was the default selection. Just
               | today they AGAIN updated terms, presenting a click-
               | through form on first load that looks like a permissions
               | check (e.g. the standard dialog to enable access to the
               | file system that we're conditioned to click-through). It
               | was actually a terms-of-service update with opt-in
               | selected by default, _even if you already explicitly
               | opted out_. So if you hit enter to dismiss as you 're
               | used to doing, you just switched your account over to
               | opt-in.
        
             | NitpickLawyer wrote:
             | They've recently switched to opt-out instead. And even
             | then, if you read the legalese they say "train frontier
             | models". That would (probably) allow them to train a reward
             | model or otherwise test/validate on your data / signals
             | without breaking the agreement. There's a lot of signal in
             | _how_ you use something (e.g. accepted vs. rejected rate)
             | that they can use without strictly including it in the
             | dataset for training their LLMs.
        
           | whalesalad wrote:
           | Claude code cli and api vs subscription are tangential. You
           | can use Claude code with an api token.
        
           | dfabulich wrote:
           | As far as I know, OpenCode sends (has to send) the same data
           | to Anthropic as Claude Code(tm) CLI (especially if they're
           | going to successfully imitate CC(tm) in order to access cheap
           | subscription pricing).
        
             | ehsanu1 wrote:
             | But I doubt you can opt in to them training on that data
             | coming in via OpenCode.
        
               | casparvitch wrote:
               | I doubt you can opt out
        
               | DoesntMatter22 wrote:
               | You have already done that when you sign up for an
               | anthropic account
        
             | NitpickLawyer wrote:
             | There are additional signals that a client can send as
             | telemetry that they lose if you use a 3rd party app. Things
             | like accepted vs rejected sessions and so on.
        
           | onel wrote:
           | That is not true, though. You have to opt in for them to
           | train on your data
        
         | OGEnthusiast wrote:
         | > More importantly, Anthropic should have open sourced their
         | Claude Code CLI a year ago. (They can and should just open
         | source it now.)
         | 
         | Isn't the whole thesis behind LLM coding that you can easily
         | clone the CLI using an LLM? Otherwise what are you paying
         | $200/mo for?
        
           | underdeserver wrote:
           | In some sense that's what OpenCode is, and Anthropic's not
           | having that.
        
             | OGEnthusiast wrote:
             | This whole thing just seems like a "I never thought the
             | leopards would eat my face" by all the people who have been
             | shilling LLMs non-stop.
        
               | eli wrote:
               | Doesn't seem like it has much to do with LLMs at all,
               | just typical vendor lock-in nonsense like how Apple's own
               | apps get entitlements not available to any other
               | developer.
        
         | Xevion wrote:
         | > Anthropic shouldn't have an all-you-can-eat plan for $200
         | when their pay-as-you-go plan would cost more than $1,000+ for
         | comparable usage. Their subscription plans should just sell you
         | API credits at, like, 20% off.
         | 
         | Sorry, I don't understand this. Either you're saying
         | 
         | A) Everyone paying $200/mo should now pay $800/mo to match this
         | 20% off figure you're theorizing... or B) Maybe you're implying
         | that the $1,000+ costs are too high and they should be lowered,
         | to like, what, $250/mo? (250 - 20% = $200)
         | 
         | Which confuses me, because neither option is feasible or ever
         | gonna happen.
        
           | tsimionescu wrote:
           | Not the OP, but it seems pretty clear to me - they're
           | suggesting that fixed per-month pricing with unlimited usage
           | shouldn't exist at all, as it doesn't really make sense for a
           | product that has per token costs.
           | 
           | Instead, they're saying that a 200$/month subscription should
           | pay for something like $250 worth of pay-per-token API
           | tokens, and additionally give preferential pricing for using
           | up more tokens than that.
           | 
           | So, if the normal API pricing were 10$ per million tokens, a
           | 200$ per month subscription should offer 25M tokens for free,
           | and allow you to use more tokens at a 9$/1M token rate. This
           | way, if you used 50M tokens in a month, you'd pay 445$ with a
           | subscription, versus paying 500$ with pay-as-you-go. This is
           | still a good discount, but doesn't create perverse
           | incentives, as the current model does.
        
         | sheepscreek wrote:
         | Update: Touche. The repo is just plugins and skills, not the
         | meat.
         | 
         | In any case, another workaround would be using ACP that's
         | supported by Zed. Let's editing tools access the power of CLI
         | agents directly.
         | 
         | ------
         | 
         | > Anthropic should have open sourced their Claude Code CLI a
         | year ago
         | 
         | https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code
         | 
         | It has been open source for a while now. Probably 4-6 months.
         | 
         | > Anthropic shouldn't have an all-you-can-eat plan for $200
         | when their pay-as-you-go plan would cost more than $1,000+ for
         | comparable usage. Their subscription plans should just sell you
         | API credits at, like, 20% off.
         | 
         | That's a very odd thing to wish for. I love my subscriptions
         | and wouldn't have it any other way.
        
           | baby wrote:
           | You can't use it as an SDK though, unlike codex
        
             | adastra22 wrote:
             | You can though?
             | 
             | https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview
        
               | baby wrote:
               | That's to build your own agent, similar to the openai
               | agent sdk
        
           | ukuina wrote:
           | That repo does not contain the source code for Claude Code.
        
           | dboon wrote:
           | If you're going to link a repository, you should read it
           | first. That repository is just a couple plugins and community
           | links. Claude Code is, and always has been, completely closed
           | source.
        
         | baby wrote:
         | Aren't you happy that you can use claude code unlimited for
         | only 200/month? I don't really get your point tbh
        
           | Aurornis wrote:
           | I'd bet almost everyone who opts to buy the $200 plan is
           | happy with the deal they're getting relative to API pricing.
           | 
           | I think some people get triggered by the inconsistency in
           | pricing or the idea of having a fixed cost for somewhat vague
           | usage limits.
           | 
           | In practice it's a great deal for anyone using the model at
           | that level.
        
           | piokoch wrote:
           | It is not unlimited, being not careful with your context
           | management, you hit the limits quickly.
        
             | abhijat wrote:
             | Isn't the context window the same for all plans, 200k? You
             | would hit usage limits?
        
               | billyjobob wrote:
               | If you send the full 200k tokens on every request you
               | will get very few requests before you hit the token
               | limit. Caching reduces the number sent but I don't know
               | how much they can cache?
        
         | mannanj wrote:
         | How is it different from what OpenAI and Codex, and Gemini
         | offer?
        
         | krembo wrote:
         | I wonder how are these pricings compared to running Claude over
         | bedrock
        
           | weird-eye-issue wrote:
           | The price is the same whether you run it on Bedrock or
           | Anthropic....
        
         | bakugo wrote:
         | > Why is Anthropic offering such favorable pricing to
         | subscribers? I dunno
         | 
         | I do, it's called vendor lock-in. The product they're trying to
         | sell is not the $200 subscription, it's the entire Claude Code
         | ecosystem.
         | 
         | For the average person, the words "AI" and "ChatGPT" are
         | synonims. OpenAI's competitors have long conceded this loss,
         | and for the most part, they're not even trying to compete,
         | because it's clear to everyone that there is no clear path to
         | monetization in this market - the average joe isn't going to
         | pay for a $100/mo subscription to ask a chatbot to do their
         | homework or write a chocolate cake recipe, so good luck making
         | money there.
         | 
         | The programming market is an entirely different story, though.
         | It's clear that corporations are willing to pay decent money to
         | replace human programmers with a service that does their work
         | in a fraction of the time (and even the programmers themselves
         | are willing to pay independently to do less work, even if it
         | will ultimately make them obsolete), and they don't care enough
         | about quality for that to be an issue. So everyone is currently
         | racing to capture this potentially profitable market, and
         | Claude Code is Anthropic's take on this.
         | 
         | Simply selling the subscription on its own without any lock-in
         | isn't the goal, because it's clearly not profitable, nor is it
         | currently meant to be, it's a loss leader. The actual goal is
         | to get people invested long-term in the Claude Code ecosystem
         | as a whole, so that when the financial reality catches up to
         | the hype and prices have to go up 5x to start making real
         | money, those people feel compelled to keep paying, instead of
         | seeking out cheaper alternatives, or simply giving up on the
         | whole idea. This is why using the subscription as an API for
         | other apps isn't allowed, why Claude Code is closed source, why
         | it doesn't support third party OpenAI-compatible APIs, and why
         | it reads a file called CLAUDE.md instead of something more
         | generic.
        
         | iamkonstantin wrote:
         | What's ridiculous is that the subscription at 180EUR/month
         | (excl. VAT) is already absurdly expensive for what you get. I
         | doubt many would sign up for the per-API usage as it's just not
         | sustainable pricing (as a user).
        
           | thunfischtoast wrote:
           | That entirely depends on your business case. If that call
           | costing 50 Cent has done something for me which would have
           | taken me more than 1 minute of paid working time to do it's
           | sustainable.
        
           | anonzzzies wrote:
           | For the bizarre amount of work that gets done for that 180
           | euro, it is really cheap. We are just getting used to it and
           | sinking prices everywhere, it is just that CC is the best
           | (might be taste or bias, I at least think so), so we are
           | staying with it for now. If it gets more expensive, we will
           | go and try others for production instead of just trying them
           | to get a feel for the competition as we do now.
        
           | baq wrote:
           | It pays for itself in a day for some folks. It is a lot but
           | it's still cheap.
        
           | elAhmo wrote:
           | This take is ridiculous. Nearly everyone who uses Max agrees
           | that what they get for the money paid is an amazing deal. If
           | you don't use or understand how LLMs fit in your workflows,
           | you are not the target customer. But for people who use it
           | daily, it is a relatively small investment compared to the
           | time saved.
        
             | Majromax wrote:
             | > If you don't use or understand how LLMs fit in your
             | workflows, you are not the target customer.
             | 
             | I feel like this is a major area of divergence. The "vibes"
             | are bifurcating between "coding agents are great!" and
             | "coding agents are all hype!", with increasing levels of
             | in-group communication.
             | 
             | How should I, an agent-curious user, begin to unravel this
             | mess if $200 is significantly more than pocket change? The
             | pro-agent camp remarks that these frontier models are
             | qualitatively better and using older/cheaper approaches
             | would give a misleading impression, so "buy the discount
             | agent" doesn't even seem like a reasonable starting point.
        
               | 12345hn6789 wrote:
               | The$20 plan exists for a reason. If you're interested you
               | can give it a whirl.
        
         | globular-toast wrote:
         | > More importantly, Anthropic should have open sourced their
         | Claude Code CLI a year ago. (They can and should just open
         | source it now.)
         | 
         | I assume they're embarrassed by it. Didn't one of their devs
         | recently say it's 100% vibe coded?
        
         | weird-eye-issue wrote:
         | By this logic ChatGPT shouldn't exist either and should be
         | charged by API pricing
        
         | wooger wrote:
         | It's hard to understand what Anthropic are getting from forcing
         | more people to use Claude Code vs any other tools via the API.
         | Why do they care? Do they somehow get better analytics or do
         | they dream that there's a magical lock-in effect... from a
         | buggy CLI?
        
           | elAhmo wrote:
           | Not that hard to understand, they want to control how their
           | users use their product. A CLI they built, even acquiring the
           | framework it was built in, is a way to achieve that.
        
             | touristtam wrote:
             | But to make a "gauche" analogy, that would be like
             | Microsoft not letting you browse their websites without
             | using their browser (Edge).
        
               | weikju wrote:
               | Don't give them any ideas!
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | ActiveX has entered the chat.
        
           | sho wrote:
           | I suspect that they lose control over the cheaper models CC
           | can choose for you for eg. file summaries or web fetch.
           | Indeed, they lose web fetch and whatever telemetry it gives
           | them completely.
           | 
           | It's not unreasonable to assume that without the ability to
           | push haiku use aggresively for summarization, the average
           | user in OC vs CC costs more.
        
             | oidar wrote:
             | This is a very good point. If the 3rd party tools are using
             | opus for compacting/summarizing - that would increase
             | inference costs for anthropic.
        
           | mike_hearn wrote:
           | It's because the model companies believe there's no way to
           | survive just selling a model via an API. That is becoming a
           | low margin, undifferentiated commodity business that can't
           | yield the large revenue streams they need to justify the
           | investments. The differences between models just aren't large
           | enough and the practice of giving model weights away for free
           | (dumping) is killing that business.
           | 
           | So they all want to be product companies. OpenAI is able to
           | keep raising crazy amounts of capital because they're a
           | product company and the API is a sideshow. Anthropic got
           | squeezed because Altman launched ChatGPT first for free and
           | immediately claimed the entire market, meaning Anthropic
           | became an undifferentiated Bing-like also-ran until the
           | moment they launched Claude Code and had something unique.
           | For consumer use Claude still languishes but when it comes to
           | coding and the enormous consumption programmers rack up,
           | OpenAI is the one cloning Claude Code rather than the other
           | way around.
           | 
           | For Claude Code to be worth anything to Anthropic's investors
           | it _must_ be a product and not just an API pricing tier. If
           | it 's a product they have so many more options. They can e.g.
           | include ads, charge for corporate SSO integrations, charge
           | extra for more features, add social features... I'm sure they
           | have a thousand ideas, all of which require controlling the
           | user interface and product surface.
           | 
           | That's the entire reason they're willing to engage in their
           | own market dumping by underpricing tokens when consumed via
           | their CLI/web tooling: build up product loyalty that can then
           | be leveraged into further revenue streams beyond paying for
           | tokens. That strategy doesn't work if anyone can just emulate
           | the Claude Code CLI at the wire level. It'd mean Anthropic
           | buys market share for their own competitors.
           | 
           | N.B. this kind of situation is _super common_ in the tech
           | industry. If you 've ever looked at Google's properties
           | you'll discover they're all locked behind Javascript
           | challenges that verify you're using a real web browser. The
           | features and pricing of the APIs is usually very different to
           | what consumers can access via their web browser and technical
           | tricks are used to segment that market. That's why SERP
           | scraping is a SaaS (it's far too hard to do directly yourself
           | at scale, has to be outsourced now), and why Google is suing
           | them for bypassing "SearchGuard", which appears to just be
           | BotGuard rebranded. I designed the first version of BotGuard
           | and the reason they use it on every surface now, and not just
           | for antispam, is because businesses require the ability to
           | segment API traffic that might be generated by competitors
           | from end user/human traffic generated by their own products.
           | 
           | If Anthropic want to continue with this strategy they'll need
           | to do the same thing. They'll need to build what is
           | effectively an anti-abuse team similar to the BotGuard team
           | at Google or the VAC team at Valve, people specialized in
           | client integrity techniques and who have experience in
           | detecting emulators over the network.
        
           | 0x500x79 wrote:
           | DAU/MAU for IPO.
        
         | moltar wrote:
         | To extend your all you can eat analogy. It's similar to how all
         | you can eat restaurants allow you to eat all you can within the
         | bounds of the restaurant, but you aren't allowed to bring the
         | food out with you.
        
           | jbstack wrote:
           | It's not really a fair analogy. Restaurants don't want you
           | taking food away because they want to limit the amount you
           | eat to a single meal, knowing that you'll stop when you get
           | full. If you take food out you can eat more by waiting until
           | the next meal when you're hungry again.
           | 
           | You don't "get full" and "get hungry again" by switching UIs.
           | You can consume the same amount whether you switch or you
           | don't switch.
        
             | samrolken wrote:
             | Claude Code does a lot of work in optimizing context usage,
             | how much output is included by tools and how that's done,
             | and when to compact. This very well may make the cost of
             | providing the subscription lower to Anthropic when Claude
             | Code is used. It's well within the realm of possibility if
             | not likelihood that other tools don't have the same
             | incentive to optimize the buffet usage.
             | 
             | Not sure where that goes in the analogies here but maybe
             | something about smaller plates.
        
             | dpark wrote:
             | > You don't "get full" and "get hungry again" by switching
             | UIs. You can consume the same amount whether you switch or
             | you don't switch.
             | 
             | This is actually a compelling argument for Claude Code
             | getting the discount but not extending it to other cases.
             | Claude Code, being subsidized by the company, is
             | incentivized to minimize token usage. Third parties that
             | piggyback on the same flat rate subscription, are not. i.e.
             | Claude code _wants_ you to eat less.
             | 
             | Of course, I don't believe at all that this is why
             | Anthropic has blocked this use case. But it is a reasonable
             | argument.
        
             | mrgoldenbrown wrote:
             | The UI absolutely could influence the backend usage.
             | 
             | Think about a web browser that respects cache lifetimes vs
             | one that downloads everything everytime. As an ISP I'd be
             | more likely to offer you unlimited bandwidth if I knew you
             | were using a caching browser.
             | 
             | Likewise Claude code can optimize how it uses tokens and
             | potentially provide the same benefit with less usage.
        
           | dfabulich wrote:
           | Not really. At a buffet restaurant, if you could take the
           | food out with you, you'd takeaway more food than you can eat
           | at one sitting. OpenCode users and Claud Code(tm) CLI users
           | use tokens at approximately the same rate.
           | 
           | This is more like an all-you-can-eat restaurant requiring you
           | to eat with their flimsy plastic forks, forbidding you to
           | bring your own utensils.
        
             | whatsupdog wrote:
             | Why is this being downvoted? This is the perfect analogy.
        
             | snackdex wrote:
             | yes with the whole goal to make the utensils better
        
             | samrolken wrote:
             | Claude Code does a lot regarding optimizing context usage,
             | tool output, sub-agent interactions, context compaction,
             | and stuff like that. I don't imagine OpenCode has the same
             | financial incentive to decrease the token cost Anthropic
             | takes on under the subscriptions.
        
           | PunchyHamster wrote:
           | ...no, that's more like "but you can't bring your own fork"
        
           | hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
           | Another analogy is that it's a takeout but anthropic is
           | insisting you only eat at home with the plastic utensils
           | they've provided rather than the nice metal utensils you have
           | at home.
           | 
           | Another analogy is that it's a restaurant that offers
           | delivery and they're insisting you use their own in house
           | delivery service instead of placing a pickup order and asking
           | your friendly neighbor to pick it up for you on their way
           | back from the office.
        
             | savanaly wrote:
             | The all you can eat buffet analogy makes way more sense to
             | me, because it speaks to the aspect of it where the
             | customer can take a lot of something without restriction.
             | That's the critical thing with the Anthropic subscription,
             | and the takeout analogy or delivery service don't contain
             | any element of it.
        
           | darepublic wrote:
           | anthropic should not be criticizing the gluttony of others
           | whilst licking its fingers surrounded by buckets full of
           | fried chicken
        
         | icsrutil wrote:
         | > They can and should just open source it now
         | 
         | Why you have this idea? why they should open source it now?
        
         | piokoch wrote:
         | My problem with CC is that it is trying to be very creative. I
         | am asking it to fix some test, or create a new test. What it is
         | doing? It is running grep to find all tests in the code base
         | and parses them. This eats a lot of tokens.
         | 
         | Then it runs the test, as if I could not do this myself, it
         | reads the output, sometimes very long (so more and more tokens
         | are burned) and so on.
         | 
         | If people had to pay for this cleverness and creativity an API
         | price, they would be a bit shocked and give up quickly CC.
         | 
         | Using Aider with Claude Sonnet I am eating much less tokens
         | than CC does.
        
         | llmslave2 wrote:
         | > More importantly, Anthropic should have open sourced their
         | Claude Code CLI a year ago. (They can and should just open
         | source it now.)
         | 
         | Who cares? Just have Claude vibe code it in an afternoon...
        
         | kar1181 wrote:
         | Anthropic want you to use claude code cli badly and are
         | prepared to be very generous if you do. People want to take
         | that generosity without the reciprocity.
         | 
         | I don't normally like to come down on the side of the
         | megabigcorp but in this case anthropic aren't being evil. Not
         | yet anyway.
        
           | redbluered wrote:
           | I think they are.
           | 
           | The key question is about why they want to you to use the
           | CLI. If you're not the customer, you're the product.
           | 
           | There's also a monopolistic aspect to this. Having the best
           | model isn't something over can legally exploit to gain
           | advantage in adjacent markets.
           | 
           | It reeks of "Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run,"
           | Windows showing spurious error messages for DR-DOS, and
           | Borland C++ losing to the then-inferior Visual C++ due to
           | late support of new Windows features. And Internet Explorer
           | bundling versus Netscape.
           | 
           | Yes, Microsoft badly wanted you to use Office, Visual C++,
           | MS-DOS, and IE, but using Windows to get that was illegal.
           | 
           | Microsoft lost in court, paid a nominal fine, and executives
           | were crying all the way to the bank.
        
             | senordevnyc wrote:
             | _If you 're not the customer, you're the product._
             | 
             | You are the customer, you're paying them directly.
        
           | dheatov wrote:
           | Assuming the actual price for many user is closer to 1k
           | USD/mth than to 200 USD/mth, and the actual price is closer
           | to their target margin to be a viable business, they're
           | practically subsidising usage after 200 USD/mth. Together
           | with other AI-TECH doing the same, they fabricate a false
           | sense of "AI is capable AND affordable", which imo is evil.
        
             | vovavili wrote:
             | There is nothing evil about prioritizing customer
             | acquisition over immediate profit.
        
               | fc417fc802 wrote:
               | And yet in many cases there are regulations against it.
               | Almost as though behavior that warps the market is
               | generally undesirable.
        
               | vovavili wrote:
               | Give me an example of one such regulation.
        
               | fc417fc802 wrote:
               | Are you sure you're participating in good faith? I'll go
               | ahead and indulge you for the benefit of the audience
               | though.
               | 
               | The generic term is predatory pricing and it's regulated
               | to some extent in pretty much every country. https://en.w
               | ikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#Legal_aspect...
               | 
               | When carried out at the international level it's known as
               | dumping. The WTO has provisions against it. https://en.wi
               | kipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)#Legal...
        
               | keeda wrote:
               | As the Wikipedia page calls out, predatory pricing is
               | generally in the context of a dominant firm throwing
               | their weight around to dominate the market. You could
               | make this case against large incumbents like Microsoft
               | and Google, but Anthropic is actually the upstart here.
               | 
               | In any case, all this depends on how you define the
               | "market", and the entire market for AI-assisted coding is
               | very nascent and fast-moving to make any reliable calls
               | about dominance at this point.
        
               | fc417fc802 wrote:
               | That's the context where it tends to get regulated.
               | Indeed it doesn't apply to Anthropic. Neither is
               | Anthropic a party to the WTO.
               | 
               | I was asked for examples of behavior that distorts the
               | market being regulated and provided two of them. There
               | are other examples out there as well.
        
           | realharo wrote:
           | Well they are doing the same to website owners who rely on
           | human visitors for their revenue streams.
           | 
           | Both scraping and on-demand agent-driven interactions erode
           | that. So you could look at people doing the same to them as a
           | sort of poetic justice, from a purely moral standpoint at
           | least.
        
         | danmaz74 wrote:
         | > More importantly, Anthropic should have open sourced their
         | Claude Code CLI a year ago. (They can and should just open
         | source it now.)
         | 
         | "Should have" for what reason? I would be happy if they open
         | sourced Claude Code, but the reality is that Claude Code is
         | what makes Anthropic so relevant in the programming more, much
         | more than the Claude models themselves. Asking them to give it
         | away for free to their competitors seems a bit much.
        
           | mrbungie wrote:
           | Well OpenCode already exists and you can connect it to
           | multiple providers, so you could just say that the agentic
           | CLI harness business model as a service/billable feature is
           | no more. In hindsight I would say it never made sense in the
           | first place.
        
             | danmaz74 wrote:
             | When I compared OpenCode and Claude Code head to head a
             | couple of months ago, Claude Code worked much better for
             | me. I don't know if they closed the gap in the meantime,
             | but for sure Claude Code has improved since then.
        
               | vmg12 wrote:
               | OpenCode launched a couple of months ago so that makes
               | sense that it's worse. It's much better than Claude Code
               | now. Somehow for the same model, opencode completes the
               | same work faster than claude code and the ux is much
               | better.
        
               | rovr138 wrote:
               | You win by adoption.
               | 
               | Here adoption is a combination on the tool and the model.
               | 
               | If people can't pay the model to use the tool, they might
               | not use the tool even if it's better.
               | 
               | That's what anthropic is doing.
               | 
               | It might be faster, but it's more expensive.
        
               | aatd86 wrote:
               | There is no loyalty. They eho have the best models win.
               | 
               | The only way remains to try and lock consumers into your
               | ecosystem.
        
               | vmg12 wrote:
               | Meant to say "it was worse" not "it's worse"
        
             | xpe wrote:
             | The above does not prove that it is irrational for
             | Anthropic to keep the Claude Code source code closed. There
             | are many reasons I can see (and probably some I can't) for
             | why closed source is advantageous for A\\. One such
             | (mentioned in various places) is the value-add of certain
             | kinds of analytics and or telemetry.
             | 
             | Aside: it is pretty easy to let our appreciation* of OSS
             | turn into a kind of confirmation bias about its value to
             | other people/orgs.
             | 
             | * I can understand why people promote OSS from various
             | POVs: ethics, security, end user control, ecosystem
             | innovation, sheer generosity, promotion of goodwill,
             | expressions of creativity, helping others, the love of
             | building things, and much more. I value all of these
             | things. But I'm wary of reasoning and philosophies that
             | offer merely binary judgments, especially ones that try to
             | claim what is best for another party. That's really hard to
             | know so we do well to be humble about our claims.**
             | 
             | **: Finally, being humble about what one knows does not
             | mean being "timid" with your logic or reasoning. Just be
             | sure to state it as clearly as you can by mentioning your
             | premises and values.
        
             | rovr138 wrote:
             | Except that the cost is better with their harness and looks
             | like people don't want to fork 5x.
             | 
             | Adoption is how one wins. Look at all the crappy solutions
             | out there that are still around.
        
             | sbarre wrote:
             | Branding and customer relationships matter as much or more
             | than the "billable service" part of Claude Code.
             | 
             | It's not unheard of for companies that have strong customer
             | mindshare to find themselves intermediated by competitors
             | or other products to the point that they just became part
             | of the infrastructure and eventually lose that mindshare.
             | 
             | I doubt Anthropic wants to become a swappable backend for
             | the actual thing that developers reach for to do their work
             | (the CLI tool).
             | 
             | Don't get me wrong, I think developers should 100% have the
             | choice of tooling they want to use.
             | 
             | But from a business standpoint I think maintaining that
             | direct or first-party connection to the developer is what
             | Anthropic are trying to protect here.
        
           | reactordev wrote:
           | Claude code is nothing more than a loop to Opus.
        
             | sirtaj wrote:
             | I use Q/aka kiro-cli at work with opus and it's clearly
             | inferior to CC within the first 30s or so of usage. So no,
             | not quite
        
               | elfly wrote:
               | Kiro is such a disaster. It starts well with all the
               | planning, but I haven't been able to control it. It
               | changes files on a whim and changes opinion from
               | paragraph to paragraph.
               | 
               | Also it uses the Claude models but afaik it is constantly
               | changing which one is using depending on the perceived
               | difficulty.
        
               | cobolcomesback wrote:
               | > it uses the Claude models but afaik it is constantly
               | changing which one is using depending on the perceived
               | difficulty
               | 
               | Claude Code does the same. You can disable it in Kiro by
               | specifically setting the model to what you want rather
               | than "auto" using /model.
               | 
               | Tbh I've found Kiro to be much better than Claude Code.
               | The actual quality of results seems about the same, but
               | I've had multiple instances where Claude Code get stuck
               | because of errors making tool calls whereas Kiro just
               | works. Personally I also just prefer the simplicity of
               | Kiro's UX over CC's relative "flashy" TUI.
        
           | altmanaltman wrote:
           | > the reality is that Claude Code is what makes Anthropic so
           | relevant in the programming more, much more than the Claude
           | models themselves
           | 
           | but Claude Code cannot run without Claude models? What do you
           | mean?
        
             | boh wrote:
             | Relative to their competitors who also have comparable
             | models, Anthropic's design choices in effectively managing
             | context with a very well thought out and coherent design,
             | makes them stand out.
        
               | dkdcio wrote:
               | (i.e. competitors can still use Claude models but haven't
               | achieved the same DevEx as CC so far, at least in my
               | opinion and many others)
               | 
               | also while I was initially on the "they should open
               | source" boat, and I'm happy Codex CLI did, there are a
               | ton of benefits to keeping to closed source. just look at
               | how much spam and dumb community drama OpenAI employees
               | now have to deal with on GitHub. I increasingly think
               | it's a smart moved to keep it closed source and iterate
               | without as direct community involvement on the codebase
               | for now
        
               | rovr138 wrote:
               | They could open source and not take contributions fwiw.
               | 
               | They could close the issues and only allow discussions.
               | 
               | There was a project mentioned here recently that did just
               | that.
               | 
               | *Edit
               | 
               | It was Ghostty,
               | 
               | "Why users cannot create Issues directly" -
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46460319
        
               | joelwilliamson wrote:
               | They could open source it and not even have a Github
               | project associated. Just provide a read-only git repo on
               | anthropic.com or drop a source tarball every release.
        
               | hxugufjfjf wrote:
               | Then a ton of vibe-coded Claude Code forks out of their
               | control would pop up on GitHub and people would be even
               | more frustrated at Anthropic for not fixing their issues.
        
               | F7F7F7 wrote:
               | If you enjoy working out of the terminal and CLI/TUI's
               | then it's not even close. Gemini, Codex, CoPilot, and
               | every other CLI I can think of are awful. Stumbling,
               | bumbling and you'd be lucky to keep your file tree in
               | tact even with tight permissions (short of a sandbox).
               | 
               | Claude Code feels like my early days when pair
               | programming was all the rage.
               | 
               | If you have the time OpenCode comes the closest and lets
               | you work across providers seamless.
        
             | kurtis_reed wrote:
             | https://github.com/musistudio/claude-code-router
        
           | giancarlostoro wrote:
           | Yeah, I've heard of people swapping out the model that Claude
           | Code calls and apparently its not THAT much of a difference.
           | What I'd love to see from Anthropic instead is, give me
           | smaller LLM models, I don't even care if they're "open
           | source" or not, just pull down a model that takes maybe 4 or
           | 6 GB of VRAM into my local box, and use those for your coding
           | agents, you can direct it and guide it with Opus anyway, so
           | why not cut down on costs for everyone (consumer and
           | Anthropic themselves!) by just letting users who can run some
           | of the compute locally. I've got about 16GB of VRAM I can
           | juice out of my Macbook Pro, I'm okay running a few smaller
           | models locally with the guiding hand of Opus or Sonnet for
           | less compute on the API front.
        
             | tacoooooooo wrote:
             | not sure there are any models yet that you can get the
             | quality out you need to do this and run on your mbp
        
             | motbus3 wrote:
             | Anthropic might have good models, but they are the worse. I
             | mentioned in another thread how they do whatever they can
             | to bypass bot detection protection to scrap content.
        
             | labcomputer wrote:
             | So, like, why don't people just use the better-than-Claude
             | OpenCode CLI with these other just-as-good-as-Claude
             | models?
        
         | sourcecodeplz wrote:
         | It is and was open source from the start?
         | 
         | https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code
        
           | c0balt wrote:
           | Unless I'm severely mistaken that's not the source code for
           | claude-code. It's a few official plugins and some helper
           | scripts
        
           | vovavili wrote:
           | Look a bit closer to the contents of this repo. There is
           | basically no code.
        
         | skerit wrote:
         | > Anthropic shouldn't have an all-you-can-eat plan for $200
         | when their pay-as-you-go plan would cost more than $1,000+ for
         | comparable usage. Their subscription plans should just sell you
         | API credits at, like, 20% off
         | 
         | I have the "all-you-can-eat" plan _because_ I know what I'm
         | getting and how much it'll cost me.
         | 
         | I don't see anything wrong with this. It's just a big time-
         | limited amount of tokens you can use. Of course it sucks that
         | it's limited to Claude-Code and Claude.ai. But the other
         | providers have very similar subscriptions. Even the original
         | ChatGTP pro subscription gives you a lot more tokens for the
         | $20 it costs compared to the API cost.
         | 
         | I always assumed tokens over the API cost that much, because
         | that's just what people are willing to pay. And what people are
         | willing to pay for small pay-as-you-go tasks vs large-scale
         | agentic coding just doesn't line up.
         | 
         | And then there's the psychological factor: if Claude messed up
         | and wasted a bunch of tokens, I'm going to be super pissed that
         | those specific tokens will have cost me $30. But when it's just
         | a little blip on my usage limit, I don't really mind.
        
         | juped wrote:
         | I'm baffled that people, unknown to me, have apparently been
         | considering Claude Code, the program, some kind of "secret
         | sauce". It's a tool harness. Claude could one-shot write it for
         | you, lol.
        
         | rolymath wrote:
         | What an incredibly entitled message. If you know what anthropic
         | should and shouldn't do, go start your own AI company.
        
           | petesergeant wrote:
           | Right? Lots of "Anthropic should do x because that's what
           | makes sense to me".
        
         | j45 wrote:
         | Claude Code is unusually efficient in the use if tokens in top
         | of it all.
        
         | steveharman wrote:
         | I believe there are a number of cli tools which also use
         | Anthropic's Max plan (subscription) - this isn't just an
         | OpenCode issue.
         | 
         | I had the TaskMaster AI tool hooked up to my Anthropic sub, as
         | well as a couple of other things - Kilo Code and and Roo Code
         | iirc?
         | 
         | From discussions at the time (6 months ago) this "use your
         | Anthropic sub" functionality was listed by at least one of the
         | above projects as "thanks to the functionality of the Anthropic
         | SDK you can now use your sub...." implying it was officially
         | sanctioned rather than via a "workaround".
        
         | reactordev wrote:
         | It's all about the data.
         | 
         | They want you to use their tool so they can collect data.
        
         | adam_patarino wrote:
         | They are subsidizing Claude code so they can use your data to
         | train better coding models. You're paying them to show their
         | models how to code better.
        
           | stemlord wrote:
           | If true I wonder what kind of feedback loop is happening by
           | training on human behavior that's directly influenced by the
           | output of the same model
        
             | adam_patarino wrote:
             | We build our fine tuning and reinforcement pipeline at
             | cortex.build by synthesizing interactions between a user,
             | the agent loops, and a codebase. The exact data they get
             | from users in Claude Code.
             | 
             | That data is critical to improve tool call use (both in
             | correctness but also to improve when the agent chooses to
             | use that tool). It's also important for the context
             | rewrites Claude does. They rewrite your prompt and
             | continuously manage the back-and-forth with the model. So
             | does Cortex, just more aggressively with a more powerful
             | context graph.
        
         | stingraycharles wrote:
         | What part of a TOS is ridiculous? Claude Code is obviously a
         | loss leader to them, but developer momentum / market share is
         | important to them and they consider it worth it.
         | 
         | What part of "OpenCode broke the TOS of something well defined"
         | makes you think it's all Anthropic's fault?
        
           | mnky9800n wrote:
           | My guess is that ultimately the use of Claude code will
           | provide the training data to make most of what you do now in
           | Claude code irrelevant.
        
           | fc417fc802 wrote:
           | Poor behavior is still poor behavior even if the relevant ToS
           | aligns with it.
        
             | anamexis wrote:
             | Why is it poor behavior though?
        
               | fc417fc802 wrote:
               | Restricting users from using third party tools is
               | commonly viewed as poor behavior. I'm not inclined to
               | rehash that debate here, although I might respond to
               | specific (contextually relevant) counterpoints if you
               | feel like making them.
        
           | ForHackernews wrote:
           | Do you think Anthropic followed all the ToS of every website
           | on the internet when scraping them for training data?
        
             | rovr138 wrote:
             | You justify a wrong thing by attacking something else? Is
             | that the only argument?
        
               | ForHackernews wrote:
               | I don't feel any need to behave respectfully toward
               | people or institutions that clearly don't respect me.
        
           | landl0rd wrote:
           | It's probably not a "loss-leader" so much as "somewhat lower
           | margin". Their bizdev guys are doubtless happy to make a
           | switch between lower-margin, higher-multiple recurring
           | revenue versus higher-margin, lower-multiple pay-as-you-go
           | API billing. Corporate customers with contracts doubtless
           | aren't paying like that for the API either. This is not
           | uncommon.
        
           | Ajedi32 wrote:
           | When you have a "loss leader" whose sole purpose is to build
           | up market share (e.g. put competitors out of business) that's
           | called predatory pricing.
        
             | anamexis wrote:
             | Every loss leader's purpose is to build up market share.
        
           | epolanski wrote:
           | I keep hearing those claims that's they lose money on it, but
           | I have more and more doubts about this being true.
           | 
           | GPU compute cost has falled down in the last two years a lot.
        
         | mirzap wrote:
         | I tend to think that their margins on API pricing are
         | significantly higher. They likely gave up some of that margin
         | to grow the Claude Code user base, though it probably still
         | runs at a thin profit. Businesses are simply better customers
         | than individuals and are willing to pay much more.
        
         | giancarlostoro wrote:
         | > More importantly, Anthropic should have open sourced their
         | Claude Code CLI a year ago. (They can and should just open
         | source it now.)
         | 
         | It's not like if it houses some top secret AI models inside of
         | it, and it would make way more sense, and probably expand the
         | capabilities of Claude Code itself. Do they lose out to having
         | OpenAI or other competitors basically stealing their approach?
        
         | motbus3 wrote:
         | I guess we will find out on the updated TOCs very soon
        
         | heliumtera wrote:
         | >But they really want you to use the Claude Code(tm)
         | 
         | They definitely want their absolutely proprietary software with
         | sudo privilege on your machine. I wonder why they would want
         | that geeez
        
           | rovr138 wrote:
           | it doesn't need sudo privileges...
        
             | heliumtera wrote:
             | Yeah, it is not necessary. Being able to run unprivileged
             | commands on millions of machines is already a stupidly
             | powerful thing
        
         | dathinab wrote:
         | I guess it's another case of:
         | 
         | - effective moneytizeability of a lot of AI products seem
         | questionable
         | 
         | - so AI cost strongly subsidized in all kinds of ways
         | 
         | - which is causing all kind of strange dynamics and is very
         | much incompatible with "free market self regulation" (hence why
         | a company long term running by investor money _and_ under-
         | pricing any competition which isn't subsidized is theoretically
         | not legal (in the US). Not that the US seem to care to actually
         | run a functioning self regulating free market, even going back
         | as far as Amazone. Turns out moving "state subsidized" to
         | "subsidized by rich" somehow makes it no longer problematic /
         | anti-free-market /non-liberal ... /s))
        
         | xtiansimon wrote:
         | Sorry, ClaudeCode is $200/mo? I'm not using it now, but was
         | thinking about giving it a try. The website shows $200/year for
         | Pro:
         | 
         | "$17 Per month with annual subscription discount ($200 billed
         | up front). $20 if billed monthly."
         | 
         | https://claude.com/pricing
         | 
         | What are you referring to that's 10x that price? (Conversely,
         | I'm wondering why Pro costs 1/10 the value of whatever you're
         | referring to?!?)
        
           | vadansky wrote:
           | Keep scrolling down, there is a Max option
        
           | crassus_ed wrote:
           | I got a pro subscription yesterday. With it you get a certain
           | amount of tokens and you have a certain limit every 5 hours
           | and every week.
           | 
           | Once the limit is reached, you can choose to pay-per-token,
           | upgrade your plan, or just wait until it refreshes. The more
           | expensive subscription variants just contain more tokens,
           | that's all.
        
           | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
           | They don't exactly put it front and center. Click "usage
           | limits" (at the bottom;
           | https://support.claude.com/en/articles/9797557-usage-
           | limit-b...) then "Max plan" in the first list
           | (https://support.claude.com/en/articles/11014257-about-
           | claude...). There is a $200/mo price which people are likely
           | referring to with "20x more usage per session" (which kinda
           | bothers me because I'd bet my bottom dollar it's 20x "as
           | much" but that's a lost cause).
        
         | rienbdj wrote:
         | What can we learn from this?
         | 
         |  _The model is not a moat_
         | 
         | They need to own the point of interaction to drive company
         | valuation. Users can more about tool switching costs that the
         | particular model they use.
        
         | parliament32 wrote:
         | > let's sell a loss leader
         | 
         | > oh no, people are actually buying the loss leader
         | 
         | I'm looking forward to the upcoming reckoning when all these AI
         | companies start actually charging users what the services cost.
        
           | HDThoreaun wrote:
           | I see zero reason to believe the $200 subscription is losing
           | money. Anthropic makes subscriptions cheaper because 1. Most
           | users dont use all their allocated tokens 2. subscriptions
           | create a lock in effect, even if its a weak one 3. Easier to
           | raise money when you can point to your ARR from subscriptions
           | 4. Lowering revenue variance month to month is very valuable
           | for businesses
        
         | arbirk wrote:
         | I agree with the principle, but reality dictates that users and
         | exposure is the real currency. So while annoying it is
         | understandable that Anthropic subsidizes their own direct
         | users.
        
         | HDThoreaun wrote:
         | > Why is Anthropic offering such favorable pricing to
         | subscribers?
         | 
         | Most subscribers dont use up all their allocated tokens. Theyre
         | banning these third parties because they consistently do use
         | all their allocated tokens.
        
       | ehsanu1 wrote:
       | I understand them not wanting to allow non-coding agents to use
       | the subscription, but why specifically block another coding
       | agent? Is the value Anthropic gets from users specifically using
       | claude code that high? Is it about the training data opt-ins?
        
       | ChaseRensberger wrote:
       | Wow, i sat down to do a little bit of late night coding and ended
       | up running into this nightmare. Just canceled my anthropic
       | subscription and started paying for opencode zen. Unfortunately
       | opencode is enough of a better product i will indeed pay 10 times
       | the price to use it.
        
       | ChaseRensberger wrote:
       | seems to be an easy fix already up:
       | https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode-anthropic-auth/pull/10
        
       | macinjosh wrote:
       | OpenCode has a workaround already:
       | https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode-anthropic-auth/pull/11
        
       | muppetman wrote:
       | I feel like I'm the only person on this site that doesn't use AI
       | for coding. I guess there's probably a lot of other people that
       | haven't commented on this story who don't use it either. But when
       | I read about how much hype and all that sort of stuff there is in
       | the AI industry, and then I see the amount of posts and
       | commentary and deep technical discussion about how this feature
       | has affected people, I'm not so sure. Everyone I know hates AI
       | and how it's been shoved into every corner of our lives, but I
       | look here and it's insanely popular. Anyway, sorry this was a
       | very off topic comment. It's just very interesting to me that the
       | hype isn't all just hype.
        
         | mgfist wrote:
         | I hate how AI is being shoved in most things, but I do love AI
         | in a few of those places (ai coding and google search
         | replacement)
        
           | iamkonstantin wrote:
           | Have you noticed how Google search summaries have taken the
           | shape of those annoying blogposts that take you through
           | several "What is a computer program" explainers before
           | answering the question?
        
         | luckilydiscrete wrote:
         | AI is indeed just hype in a lot of cases, but also has
         | revolutionary value in a other cases. Trying it is the only way
         | you'll be able to differentiate the latter from the former.
        
         | isodev wrote:
         | I also don't use AI for coding. I tried, I explored, I learned
         | how it works.
         | 
         | At the end, "maybe-sometimes works" and "sends a copy of all
         | your code to some server in the US" are just incompatible with
         | the kind of software I create.
         | 
         | Regarding the post, I think it's telling that Anthropic is
         | trying to force people into using their per-usage billing more
         | than the subscription. My take is that the subscription offers
         | a lot as a way of hooking developers into it and is not
         | sustainable for Anthropic if people end up actually maxing
         | their usage.
         | 
         | Given how much money is wasted into the LLM craze, I can
         | imagine there will be more "tightening of the belt" from the AI
         | corps going forward.
         | 
         | For the five coders out there, maybe it's time to use your
         | tokens to get back control of your codebases ... you may have
         | to "meat code" them soon.
        
           | luckilydiscrete wrote:
           | I'll say "maybe-sometimes works" is a misunderstanding.
           | 
           | It feels like that initially, but that's no different from
           | any new tool you adopt. A jackhammer also "maybe-sometimes
           | works" as a hammer replacement.
        
             | isodev wrote:
             | Every prompt is a run of probability - It's at the core of
             | the technology to be unable to give reproducible responses
             | and even after a while, Claude is just as likely to sneak-
             | in crimes in every snippet it outputs.
        
               | jatora wrote:
               | like the other commenter said. you need to learn to use
               | new tools. and your take clearly indicates you haven't.
        
               | lomase wrote:
               | Your take clearly indicates you need to learn how to
               | code.
        
               | xpe wrote:
               | Please don't snipe at others, even if someone else
               | started it.
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        
               | xpe wrote:
               | > Every prompt is a run of probability - It's at the core
               | of the technology to be unable to give reproducible
               | responses and even after a while, Claude is just as
               | likely to sneak-in crimes in every snippet it outputs.
               | 
               | Some readers might interpret "a run of probability" to
               | mean "we can't say anything about the statistical
               | distribution". I don't think the commenter _means_ that,
               | but still, communicating statistics is hard, so I suggest
               | being careful.
               | 
               | For example, writing "even after a while, just as likely
               | to sneak-in crimes in every snippet it outputs" is pretty
               | attention-getting and even provoking. What does the
               | commenter mean by it? What kind of 'crimes' do they mean?
               | Does the commenter really mean 'just as likely'? Just as
               | likely as what? I would think most readers would form
               | very different takes.
        
             | cocoto wrote:
             | Not true, most tools are deterministic. For instance my
             | programming language LSP just works 100% of the time with
             | no failure. It doesn't hallucinate any types, methods or
             | variables.
        
               | wiseowise wrote:
               | Your LSP also can't do complex reasoning across the
               | purpose of your whole codebase.
        
               | lomase wrote:
               | Neither LLM can reason about anything.
               | 
               | Reasoning is an human trait.
        
               | wiseowise wrote:
               | Whatever you say lol.
        
               | isodev wrote:
               | The usage of the word "reasoning" in the context of LLMs,
               | just like the "I" in "AI", that's more marketing than a
               | technical reality. I know it can be confusing.
        
               | hu3 wrote:
               | Regardless of semanthics, LLMs + tooling can do
               | impressive things.
               | 
               | For example I can tell LLMs to scan my database schema
               | and compare to code to detect drift or inconsistencies.
               | 
               | And while doing that it has enough condensed world
               | knowledge to point to me that the code is probably right
               | when declaring person.name a non-nullable string despite
               | the database column being nullable.
               | 
               | And it can infer that date_of_birth column is correct in
               | being nullable on the database schema and wrong in code
               | where the type is a non-nullable date because, in my
               | system, it knows date_of_birth is an optional field.
               | 
               | This is a simple example that can be solved by non-LLMs
               | tooling also. In practice it can do much more advanced
               | reasoning with regards to business rules.
               | 
               | We can argue semanthics all day but this is reason enough
               | to be useful for me.
               | 
               | There are many examples I could give. But to the skeptics
               | I recommend trying to use LLMs for understanding large
               | systems. But take your time to give it read only access
               | to data base schema.
        
               | wiseowise wrote:
               | Sure, sure.
        
               | xpe wrote:
               | > Neither LLM can reason about anything.
               | 
               | > Reasoning is an human trait.
               | 
               | Note: this is not directed at the commenter or any person
               | in particular. It is directed at various patterns I've
               | noticed.
               | 
               | I often notice claims like the following:
               | 
               | - human intelligence is the "truest" form of
               | intelligence;
               | 
               | - machines can't reason (without very clearly stating
               | what you mean by reasoning);
               | 
               | - [such and such] can only be done by a human (without
               | clearly stating that you mean at the present time with
               | present technology that you know of);
               | 
               | Such claims are in my view, rather unhelpful framings -
               | or worse, tropes or thought-terminated cliches. We would
               | be wise to ask ourselves how such things persist.
               | 
               | How do these ideas lodge in our brains? There are various
               | shaky premises (including cognitive missteps) that lead
               | to them. So I want to make some general comments that
               | often lead to the above kind of thinking.
               | 
               | It is more important than ever for people to grow their
               | understanding and appreciation. I suggest considering the
               | following.
               | 
               | 1. ... recognize that one probably can't offer a
               | _definition_ of {reasoning, intelligence,  &c} that is
               | widely agreed upon. Probably the best you can hope for is
               | to clarify the sense of which you mean. There are often
               | fairly clear 'camps' that can easily be referenced.
               | 
               | 2. Recognition that implicitly hiding a definition in
               | your claims -- or worse, forcing a definition on people
               | -- doesn't do much good.
               | 
               | 3. Awareness that one's language may be often
               | _interpreted_ in various ways by reasonable people.
               | 
               | 4. Internalize dictionaries are catalogs of various usage
               | that evolve over time. Dictionaries are not _intended_ to
               | be commandments of correctness, though some still think
               | dictionary-as-bludgeon is somehow appropriate.
               | 
               | 3. Acknowledge confusing terminology in AI/LLM in
               | particular. For example, reasonable people can recognize
               | that "reasoning" in this context is a fraught term.
               | 
               | 5. Recognition that humanity is only getting started when
               | it comes to making sense of how "intelligence"
               | decomposes, how our brains work, the many nuanced
               | differences between machine intelligence and human
               | intelligence.
               | 
               | 6. Recognize one's participation in a social context.
               | Strive to not provide fuel for the fires of
               | misunderstanding. If you use a fraught term, be extra
               | careful to say what you mean.
               | 
               | 7. Hopefully obvious: sweeping generalizations and
               | blanket black-or-white statements are unlikely to be true
               | unless you are talking about formal systems like logic
               | and mathematics. Just don't do it. Don't let your
               | thinking fall into that trap. And don't spew it -- that
               | insults the intelligence of one's audience.
               | 
               | 8. Generally speaking, people would be wise+ to think
               | about upping their epistemic game. If one says things
               | that are obviously inaccurate, you are wasting your
               | intelligence refined over millions of years by evolution
               | and culture. To do so is self-destructive, for it makes
               | oneself less valuable relative to LLMs who (although they
               | blunder) are often more reliable than people who speak
               | carelessly.
               | 
               | + Because it benefits the person directly _and_ it helps
               | culture, civilization, progress,  &c
        
         | LorenzoGood wrote:
         | I feel the same. I don't want to hear about it all the time
         | (although I welcome discussion). I wish this site would go back
         | to talking about other tech things.
        
         | globular-toast wrote:
         | I use it sparingly. I do still have to produce boilerplate and
         | don't have the time/will to engineer a better solution. But any
         | actual logic etc I do myself. Why would I take a chance on an
         | LLM doing it wrong when I know exactly how I want it and am
         | perfectly capable of doing it myself. Also, what the hell am I
         | going to do in the minutes it takes to generate, just sit there
         | and watch it? No thanks.
        
         | daliusd wrote:
         | It will be shoved into your life anyway. You might like it or
         | not, but the only safe choice is to learn and understand it
         | IMHO.
         | 
         | About usage: it looks like web development gets benefits here,
         | but other areas are not that successful somehow. While I use it
         | successfully for Neovim Lua plugins development, CLI apps (in
         | JS) and shell development (WezTerm Lua + fish shell). So I
         | don't know if:
         | 
         | a) it simply has clicked for me and it will click for everyone
         | who invests into it;
         | 
         | b) it is not for everybody because of tech;
         | 
         | c) is it not for everybody because of mindset;
        
         | dannersy wrote:
         | I share your experience. Additionally, I am surprised anyone on
         | this site did not see this progression coming. Between costs,
         | the race to be THE provider, and anyone who has an awareness of
         | how the tech industry has been operating the last 15 years,
         | this move by Anthropic was so laughably predictable that the
         | discourse in this thread is pretty disappointing.
        
         | BrouteMinou wrote:
         | All those people are on the drug they got on the cheap during
         | the fun party nights.
         | 
         | They are, or soon will be, surprised that the price is going to
         | increase, and they are the only losers in that great story of
         | theirs...
        
           | defrost wrote:
           | Was it the drug that killed River Phoenix, or the one that
           | Edmund Hillary had in his veins ascending Everest?
           | 
           | Greek philosophers pondered that question:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijx_tT5lCDY
        
         | tkgally wrote:
         | > I feel like I'm the only person on this site that doesn't use
         | AI for coding.
         | 
         | I'm surprised by that. One reason I follow discussions here
         | about AI and coding is that strong opinions are expressed by
         | professionals both for and against. It seems that every thread
         | that starts out with someone saying how AI has increased their
         | productivity invites responses from people casting doubt on
         | that claim, and that every post about the flaws in AI coding
         | gets pushback from people who claim to use it to great effect.
         | 
         | I'm not a programmer myself, but I have been using Claude Code
         | to vibe-code various hobby projects and I find it enormously
         | useful and fun. In that respect, I suppose, I stand on the side
         | of AI hype. But I also appeciate reading the many reports from
         | skeptics here who explain how AI has failed them in more
         | serious coding scenarios than what I do.
        
         | schiem wrote:
         | I don't use it at all for a variety of reasons, but I rarely
         | bother to get into discussions on HackerNews.
         | 
         | Looking at how new it is, and how quickly things are changing,
         | it seems likely that I could adopt it into my workflow in a
         | month or two if it turns out that that's necessary.
         | 
         | On the other hand, I've spent the last 2 decades building
         | skills as a developer. I'm far more worried that becoming a
         | glorified code reviewer will atrophy those skills than I am
         | about falling behind. Maybe it will turn out that those skills
         | are now obsolete, but that feels unlikely to me.
        
           | Izkata wrote:
           | > I'm far more worried that becoming a glorified code
           | reviewer will atrophy those skills
           | 
           | A co-worker who went all-in around a year ago admitted a few
           | months ago he's noticed this in himself, and was trying to
           | stop using the code-generating functionality of any of these
           | tools. Emphasis on "try": apparently the times it does work
           | amazingly makes it addictive like gambling, and it's far too
           | easy to reach for.
        
       | dboon wrote:
       | For anyone coming looking for a solution; I peeked around the OC
       | repository, and a few PRs got merged in. Add this to
       | $HOME/.config/opencode/opencode.json: plugin = ["opencode-
       | anthropic-auth"]
       | 
       | That is, if that's not pulled in to latest OC by the time I post
       | this. Not sure what the release cycle is for builtin plugins like
       | that, but by force specifying it it definitely pulls master which
       | has a fix.
       | 
       | https://opencode.ai/docs/plugins/
        
       | casparvitch wrote:
       | It appears [0] there is now a fix/workaround (?)
       | 
       | [0] https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode-anthropic-auth/pull/11
        
       | Garlef wrote:
       | Maybe a subscription based payment model would also work for in
       | general?
       | 
       | Similar to a gym membership where only a small part of the paying
       | users actually show up.
        
       | misternugget wrote:
       | Engineer working on Amp here.
       | 
       | I'm very surprised that it took them this long to crack down on
       | it. It's been against the terms of service from the start. When I
       | asked them back in March last year whether individuals can use
       | the higher rate limits that come with the Claude Code
       | subscription in other applications, that was also a no.
       | 
       | Question is: what changed? New founding round coming up, end of
       | fiscal year, planning for IPO? Do they have to cut losses?
       | 
       | Because the other surprise here is that apparently most people
       | don't know the true cost of tokens and how much money Anthropic
       | is losing with power users of Claude Code.
        
         | cmdtab wrote:
         | Yeah. If my claude code usage was on API directly, it would be
         | in thousands. I know this because I have addon credits on top
         | of the max plan because I run into weekly limits often
        
         | llmslave2 wrote:
         | > Question is: what changed? New founding round coming up, end
         | of fiscal year, planning for IPO? Do they have to cut losses?
         | 
         | I'm gonna say IPO considering their recent aggressive stealth
         | marking campaign on X, Reddit, and HN.
        
           | cheeze wrote:
           | Can you share more on this?
        
         | ramoz wrote:
         | You think anthropic is losing money now with the weekly limits?
         | And while hitting the gas on mass market?
        
       | baq wrote:
       | Meanwhile gpt codex 5.2 was never available outside of codex and
       | nobody made a fuss out of it.
        
         | meeq wrote:
         | It is available in Opencode, you just have to install this
         | plugin: https://github.com/numman-ali/opencode-openai-codex-
         | auth
         | 
         | Been using my ChatGPT sub with Opencode for a couple of weeks
         | now. Only wish I'd found out sooner. Could have saved a decent
         | chunk of money.
        
       | Szpadel wrote:
       | inference costs nothing in comparison to training (you have so
       | many requests in parallel at their scale), for inference they
       | should be profitable even when you drain whole weekly quota every
       | week
       | 
       | but of course they have to pay for training too.
       | 
       | this looks like short sighted money grab (do they need it?), that
       | trade short term profit for trust and customer base (again) as
       | people will cancel their unusable subscriptions.
       | 
       | changing model family when you have instructions tuned for for
       | one of them is tricky and takes long time so people will stick to
       | one of them for some time, but with API pricing you quickly start
       | looking for alternatives and openai gpt-5 family is also fine for
       | coding when you spend some time tuning it.
       | 
       | another pain is switching your agent software, moving from CC to
       | codex is more painful than just picking different model in things
       | like OC, this is plausible argument why they are doing this.
        
         | everfrustrated wrote:
         | >inference costs nothing
         | 
         | Clearly not true. Just look at OpenRouter model providers.
         | Costs are very very real.
        
       | mrdw wrote:
       | just use free antigravity subscription with Opus 4.5 and reverse
       | engineered API, and bunch of cheap google accounts
        
       | deveworld wrote:
       | The fix has been merged in https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode-
       | anthropic-auth/pull/11, and PR
       | https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/pull/7432 is open to bump
       | the version.
       | 
       | Until it's released, here's a workaround:
       | 
       | 1. git clone https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode-anthropic-
       | auth.git
       | 
       | 2. Add to ~/.config/opencode/opencode.json: "plugin":
       | ["file:///path/to/opencode-anthropic-auth/index.mjs"]
       | 
       | 3. Run: OPENCODE_DISABLE_DEFAULT_PLUGINS=true opencode
        
         | meeq wrote:
         | Anthropic shot themselves in the foot with this decision. It's
         | a PR nightmare and at the same time the open source community
         | will always find a way. They just wasted everyone's time and
         | likely lost a bunch of users while doing so.
         | 
         | Thank you for sharing this!
        
           | mike_hearn wrote:
           | The open source community won't always find a way. Remote
           | attestation isn't a new concept (it doesn't have to be
           | hardware backed, the concept is general).
           | 
           | The industry has enough experience with this by now to know
           | how it goes, and open source projects are always the first to
           | drop out of the race. The time taken to keep up becomes much
           | too high to justify doing on a voluntary basis or giving away
           | the results, so as the difficulty of bypassing checks goes up
           | the only people who can do it become SaaS providers.
           | 
           | BluRay BD+ was a good example of that back in the day. AACS
           | was breakable by open source players. Once BD+ came along the
           | open source doom9 crowd were immediately wiped out. For a
           | long time the only breaks came from a company in Antigua that
           | sold a commercial ripper, which was protected from US law
           | enforcement by a WTO decision specific to that island.
           | 
           | You also see this with stuff like Google YouTube/SERP
           | scraping. There currently aren't any open source solutions
           | that don't get rapidly blocked server side, AFAIK. Companies
           | that know how to beat it keep their solutions secret and sell
           | bypasses as a service.
        
         | touristtam wrote:
         | has opencode repo moved organisation from under sst to
         | anomalyco?
        
           | tietjens wrote:
           | yes, anomalyco now comprises of sst, opencode, etc.
        
         | cmrdporcupine wrote:
         | Apparently this has already been stopped in its tracks?
         | 
         | Anthropic seems determined to plug the hole.
        
       | ozlikethewizard wrote:
       | I know this is somewhat unreasonable but watching "devs" unable
       | to work because "faceless corp 1007" cut their access definitely
       | has a level of schadenfreude to it.
        
         | RamtinJ95 wrote:
         | who said they are unable to work? This meme is so old and
         | overused.
        
           | wiseowise wrote:
           | They laugh about LLMs hallucinating, but themselves
           | hallucinate the facts that don't exist all the time.
        
       | cloudking wrote:
       | Why is OpenCode better than Claude Code?
        
         | nake89 wrote:
         | Works with several providers (e.g. Github copilot or bring your
         | own key). They offer a server and an sdk, so you can build all
         | kinds of personal tools. It's amazing.
        
           | chrisvalleybay wrote:
           | Very interesting! What do you mean by personal tools? Do you
           | have any examples of something you've built with this?
        
           | paradite wrote:
           | Claude Code also has Claude Agent SDK (basically a wrapper
           | around Claude Code) with a million downloads in the past
           | week.
           | 
           | https://www.npmjs.com/package/@anthropic-ai/claude-agent-sdk
        
         | azuanrb wrote:
         | I wouldn't say it's better, but it does have some nice
         | features. Opencode has a web UI, so I can open it on my laptop
         | and then resume the same session on the web from my phone
         | through Tailscale. It's pretty handy from time to time and
         | takes almost zero effort from me.
        
         | wiseowise wrote:
         | It is open source, to start with, and works with a lot of LLMs
         | providers instead of being vendor locked into one.
        
       | CoolCold wrote:
       | Genuine question, as someone who never used Claude Code, but used
       | OpenCode/Aider/GeminiCli - as many here say Opencode is better,
       | mind sharing why (from end user perspective)?
       | 
       | I was thinking to try Claude Code later and may reconsider doing
       | so.
        
         | aserafini wrote:
         | I experimented with Claude Code but returned to the familiar
         | Aider which existed before all of these tools AFAIK.
         | 
         | You'll notice people in Aider GitHub issues being concerned
         | about its rather conservative pace of change, lack of plug-in
         | ecosystem. But I actually started to appreciate these
         | constraints as a way to really familiarise myself with the core
         | "edit files in a loop with an end goal" that is the essence of
         | all agent coding.
         | 
         | Anytime I feel a snazzy feature is lacking from Aider I think
         | about it and realise I can already solve it in Aider by
         | changing the problem to editing a file in a loop.
        
           | CoolCold wrote:
           | Well, there is Aider-CE aka Cecli, which moves, updates
           | almost every day (I'm tried to try it but much).
           | 
           | Opencode is totally different beast comparing to Aider and I
           | mostly stopped using Aider for 2 months or so - it just
           | iterate simpler and faster with OpenCode for me.
        
       | nake89 wrote:
       | Hopefully this doesn't happen with GitHub Copilot. OpenCode is
       | fantastic. They offer a server and an SDK. This means I build
       | amazing personal tools. GitHub Copilots low price + OpenCode is
       | just amazing.
        
       | willvarfar wrote:
       | Presumably there will soon be banner ads in Claude Code then?
       | </s>
        
       | ankushkun_ wrote:
       | Woke up and everything is on Fire, I thought opencode had some
       | bug coz it updated itself this morning, but realised its claude
       | who blocked third party clients :( L for Anthropic indeed,
       | opencode had wayyy better experience than claude code.
        
       | azuanrb wrote:
       | I'm curious whether this is related to the recent update. When I
       | opened Claude Code, I was greeted with a "Help improve Claude"
       | message that changes the retention policy from 30 days to 5 long
       | years.
       | 
       | They can't apply these changes or update parts of the flow for
       | the non-Claude CLI, which explains their latest move.
        
       | bazhand wrote:
       | FWIW this isn't new, using a Claude/Max subscription auth token
       | as a general-purpose "API key" has been known (and blocked) for
       | ages. OpenCode basically had to impersonate the official Claude
       | Code client to make that work, and it always felt like a loophole
       | that would get patched eventually.
       | 
       | This is exactly why (when OpenCode and Charm/Crush started
       | diverging) Charm chose not to support "use your Claude
       | subscription" auth and went in a different direction (BYOK /
       | multi-provider / etc). They didn't want to build a product on top
       | of a fragile, unofficial auth path.
       | 
       | And I think there's a privacy/policy reason tightening this now
       | too: the recent Claude Code update (2.1-ish) pops a "Help improve
       | Claude" prompt in the terminal. If you turn that ON, retention
       | jumps from 30 days to up to 5 years for new/resumed chats/coding
       | sessions (and data can be used for model improvement). If you
       | keep it OFF, you stay on the default 30-day retention. You can
       | also delete data anytime in settings. That consent + retention
       | toggle is hard to enforce cleanly if you're not in an official
       | client flow, so it makes sense they're drawing a harder line.
        
         | artdigital wrote:
         | Yea exactly, I'm surprised people are calling this "drama". It
         | was from the beginning against the ToS, all the stuff
         | supporting it just reverse engineered what Claude Code is doing
         | and spoof being a client.
         | 
         | I tried something similar few months back and Claude already
         | has restrictions against this in place. You had to very
         | specifically pretend to be real Claude Code (through copying
         | system prompts etc) to get around it, not just a header.
        
       | imdsm wrote:
       | Anthropic should buy OpenCode and merge with CC
        
         | bkolobara wrote:
         | Please no. I have recently switched to opencode and the product
         | quality is so much higher.
        
       | bionhoward wrote:
       | Why act like it's a mystery when the Claude Code repo clearly
       | explains:
       | 
       | > When you use Claude Code, we collect feedback, which includes
       | usage data (such as code acceptance or rejections), associated
       | conversation data, and user feedback submitted via the /bug
       | command.
       | 
       | They subsidize Claude Code because it gives them your codebase
       | and chat history
        
         | ksynwa wrote:
         | They should be getting most of it from third party clients too.
         | At least the chat and the files are being sent to or from
         | Anthropic's own servers.
        
       | paolomainardi wrote:
       | Not strictly related, but since Copilot could be the next to
       | violate the TOS, I've asked for an official response here:
       | https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/183809. If someone
       | can help raise this question, it's more than welcome.
        
         | everfrustrated wrote:
         | GitHub doesn't offer any unlimited style AI model plans so I
         | don't think they'll care. Their pricing is fairly aligned with
         | their costs.
         | 
         | This only affects Claude as they try to market their plan as
         | unlimited with various usage rate limits but its clearly
         | costing them a lot more than what they sell it for.
        
           | realharo wrote:
           | Copilot plan limits are however "per prompt", and prompts
           | that ask the agent to do a lot of stuff with a large context
           | are obviously going to be more expensive to run than prompts
           | that don't.
        
         | whs wrote:
         | Copilot in VSCode is integrated with VSCode's LLM provider API.
         | Which means that any plugins that needs LLM capabilities can
         | submit request to Copilot. Roo Code support that as an option.
         | And of course, there's a plugin that start an OpenAI/Anthropic-
         | compatible web server inside VSCode that just calls to the LLM
         | provider API. It seems that if you use unlimited models (like
         | GPT-4.1) you probably get unlimited API calls. However, those
         | model doesn't seems to be very agentic when used in Claude
         | Code.
        
       | krater23 wrote:
       | Hold on tight, the wild journey to enshittification has begun.
        
         | llmslave2 wrote:
         | ensloppification
        
       | B480FA8D wrote:
       | The TOS, which is a contract of adhesion for consumer-facing
       | products, does not really matter that much in my opinion since
       | "we have to lock you in to our specific interface on our public
       | offering" is not a cognizable interest. SCOTUS is also very clear
       | in requiring actual damages (in incremental harms) to establish a
       | CFAA violation. At any rate, opencode is essentially providing
       | equitable estoppel as a service by being open and popular -
       | cannot go after me without first dealing with the "unionized"
       | project (last words)! I don't think they get to conflate the
       | issues of alternative interface dispute and their intentional
       | pricing strategy losing money on heavy users.
       | 
       | Of course, they are banning for financial economic interests, not
       | nominal alleged contractual violations, so Anthropic is not
       | sympathetic.
       | 
       | // NOT LEGAL ADVICE
       | 
       | Obviously, I think it can make sense to Anthropic since opencode
       | users likely disproportionately cost them money with little lock-
       | in - you can switch the moment a comparable model is available
       | elsewhere. It does not (necessarily) mean there are any legal or
       | ethical issues barring us from continuously using the built-in
       | opencode OAuth though.
        
       | noobcoder wrote:
       | Well totally within Anthropic's rights, but still a bad look.
        
       | selectnull wrote:
       | I'm willing to cancel my Claude subscription because of this.
        
       | B480FA8D wrote:
       | A crucial context is that this "block" is resolved (for now) via
       | bumping version numbers. It is almost as if Anthropic deployed
       | this to test the water on community reaction... Right now it is
       | trivial to fingerprint opencode users without deep inspection
       | into the conversations (privacy conerns), but Anthropic is not
       | doing that.
       | 
       | https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/commit/5e0125b78c8da09...
        
         | artdigital wrote:
         | See https://github.com/charmbracelet/crush/pull/1783
         | 
         | I wouldn't be surprised if Anthropic filed a similar request
         | against OpenCode, and follows it up with a takedown eventually
        
       | kirubakaran wrote:
       | So is this the Bezos play of depressing the acquisition price?
       | iirc Bezos froze the Amazon referral program of GoodReads.com to
       | force them to take a lower price. If so, shame on them!
        
       | pmihaylov wrote:
       | I have a background agents app I'm running -
       | https://claudecontrol.com and it seems I am not impacted by this
       | change. My anthropic sub still works fine.
       | 
       | I believe this is because I am using claude code as a CLI for SDK
       | purposes vs using it as a typescript library. Quite a fortunate
       | choice at the time!
        
       | titaniumrain wrote:
       | Anthropic has a bunch of weirdos making decisions.
        
       | kalamazooo wrote:
       | OpenCode brought this on themselves and their users. Plugging
       | Claude Max subscriptions into other agents has been against the
       | terms of service basically since the start and I imagine
       | Anthropic must have issued plenty of warnings here that were
       | ignored. They wouldn't do this unless they really had to. If
       | folks are mad about being rugged, blame OpenCode for misleading
       | their users when they've long known this day was coming.
       | Brilliant cynical strategy though to exploit soft enforcement for
       | growth and lay the blame at the company that provided them cheap
       | tokens.
        
         | monooso wrote:
         | That's a lot of supposition leading to a shaky conclusion.
         | 
         | Your speculation may be correct, of course, but I have yet to
         | see any mention of Anthropic issuing "plenty of warnings", or
         | only taking this action because they "really had to."
        
           | aamoscodes wrote:
           | I haven't checked with other third parties, but Crush got a
           | warning https://github.com/charmbracelet/crush/pull/1783
        
       | d4rkp4ttern wrote:
       | Curious about portability of CC -> OpenCode. I wonder how much of
       | my CC setup (skills, commands, agents, hooks etc) will work if I
       | were to switch to OpenCode.
        
       | msten wrote:
       | This makes total sense to me. Limiting the usage to their tooling
       | means they can place reasonable limits on usage by controlling
       | how the client interacts with the LLM and making those calls as
       | efficient as possible. The current state of things didn't really
       | feel sustainable.
        
         | tempaccount420 wrote:
         | They can and already place limits on the server side.
        
       | Draiken wrote:
       | Funnily enough, I didn't know about opencode and will now test it
       | out and likely use it instead.
       | 
       | Improve your client so people prefer it? Nah.
       | 
       | Try to force people to use your client by subsidizing it? Now
       | that's what I'm talking about.
       | 
       | As others said, why not just run a bunch of agents on Claude Code
       | to surpass Opencode? I'm sure that's easy with their unlimited
       | tokens!
        
         | carlgreene wrote:
         | Lol this is my exact thought as well. Just downloaded it now
         | and taking it for a spin...pretty good so far!
        
       | dmezzetti wrote:
       | Two words: Open Source.
        
       | kburman wrote:
       | It's the standard enshittification lifecycle: subsidize usage to
       | get adoption, then lock down the API to force users into a
       | controlled environment where you can squeeze them.
       | 
       | Like Reddit, they realized they can't show ads (or control the
       | user journey) if everyone is using a third-party client. The $200
       | subscription isn't a pricing tier. It's a customer acquisition
       | cost for their proprietary platform. Third-party clients defeat
       | that purpose.
        
       | vldszn wrote:
       | At this point, Anthropic should acquihire OpenCode.
        
       | gaigalas wrote:
       | So, models are officially a commodity now.
       | 
       | The battle is for the harness layer. And it's quickly going the
       | commodity way as well.
       | 
       | What's left for boutique-style AI companies?
        
       | rvcdbn wrote:
       | couldn't opencode just switch to agent sdk?
        
       | tbliu wrote:
       | btw, Amp just announced Opus 4.5 is now supported in their free
       | tier: https://ampcode.com/news/amp-free-frontier. I've been using
       | it a ton and it's a super nice cli. It has ads, but they are
       | fairly non-intrusive
        
       | hakanderyal wrote:
       | If this helps to keep the $200 around longer, I'm happy.
       | 
       | The thing I most fear is them banning multiple accounts. That
       | would be very expensive for a lot of folks.
        
       | nomadygnt wrote:
       | Honestly with how good OpenCode is, this really just makes GitHub
       | copilot the best subscription for the average user. It's the
       | cheapest. It's free for students. You get access to all of OpenAI
       | models AND Anthropic models AND Gemini models and you still have
       | a pretty dang good CLI/TUI (OC, not Copilot CLI). And the limits
       | are pretty reasonable. I've never hit the limits in a month
       | though admittedly I am not a "five agents at once" kind of vibe
       | coder.
        
       | zeroDivisible wrote:
       | It doesn't mean much but I cancelled my 5x Max subscription to
       | Claude. Only way how I can tell them what I think about this
       | change.
        
       | kachapopopow wrote:
       | as much as I love opus I hate this company (not for the reasons
       | you'd think thought). I just have a proxy that exposes an
       | unauthenticated endpoint and bypasses all their attempts at
       | banning for opencode usage since I was already on like my 5th
       | claude account trying to get around random bans.
        
       | bilalbayram wrote:
       | its just sad
        
       | TiredOfLife wrote:
       | Reminder that Anthropic owns Bun.
        
       | pietz wrote:
       | Honest question: Why would I use Claude with OpenCode if I have a
       | Claude Max subscription? Why not Claude Code?
        
       | hooverd wrote:
       | Cynically, I think they're in a Gmail 2008 era right now.
        
       | JimmaDaRustla wrote:
       | Lots of arguing about semantics of what the subscription is
       | actually intended for.
       | 
       | Claude Code, as a coding assistant, isn't even mediocre, it's
       | kind of crap. The reason it's at all good is because of the model
       | underneath - there's tons of free and open agent tools that are
       | far better than Claude Code. Regardless of what they say you're
       | paying the subscription for, the truth is the only thing of value
       | to developers is the underlying AI and API.
       | 
       | I can only think of few reasons why they'd do this: 1. Their
       | Claude Code tool is not simply an agent assistant - perhaps it's
       | feeding data for model training purposes, or something of the
       | sorts where they gain value from it. 2. They don't want
       | developers to use competitor models in any capacity. 3. They're
       | offloading processing or doing local context work to drive down
       | the API usage locally, making the usage minimal. This is very
       | unlikely.
       | 
       | I currently use Opus 4.5 for architecting, which then feeds into
       | Gemini 3 Flash with medium reasoning for coding. It's only a
       | matter of time before Google competes with Opus 4.5, and when
       | they do, I won't have any loyalty to Anthropic.
        
         | jacquesm wrote:
         | For AI companies the access to the interaction is very
         | valuable, that explains the price difference. It is data that
         | the competition does not have access to. Of course they are
         | storing that data for model training purposes, that's the whole
         | reason this exists in the first place. They are subsidizing
         | until they get their quality up to the point that the addiction
         | is so strong you won't be able to get through your workday
         | without it. And then _surprise_ the per month access fee will
         | start to rise.
        
         | ramoz wrote:
         | The other harnesses would arguably give them even richer data
         | and product insights.
        
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