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Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code without telling users

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Re: Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code without telling users

#81

Post by sothatsit »

Ataraxic wrote: post #40

I need to see a video of what people are doing to hit the max limits regularly. I find sonnet really useful for coding but I never even hit basic limits. at $20/mo. Writing specs, coming up with documentation, doing wrote tasks for which many examples exist in the database. Iterate on particular services etc. Are these max users having it write the whole codebase w/ rewrites? Isn't it often just faster to fix small t…

I can tell you how I hit it: Opus and long workflows.

I have two big workflows: plan and implement. Plan follows a detailed workflow to research an idea and produce a planning document for how to implement it. This routinely takes $10-30 in API credits to run in the background. I will then review this 200-600 line document and fix up any mistakes or remove unnecessary details.

Then implement is usually cheaper, and it will take that big planning document, make all the changes, and then make a PR in GitHub for me to review. This usually costs $5-15 in API credits.

All it takes is for me to do 3-4 of these in one 5-hour block and I will hit the rate-limit of the $100 Max plan. Setting this up made me realise just how much scaffolding you can give to Opus and it handles it like a champ. It is an unbelievably reliable model at following detailed instructions.

It is rare that I would hit the rate-limits if I am just using Claude Code interactively, unless I am using it constantly for hours at a time, which is rare. Seems like vibe coders are the main people who would hit them regularly.

Re: Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code without telling users

#82

Post by m4rtink »

thr0waway001 wrote: post #24

> One user, who asked not to be identified, said it has been impossible to advance his project since the usage limits came into effect. Vibe limit reached. Gotta start doing some thinking.

Who would have though including a hard depedency on third part service with unclear long term availability would be a problem!

Paid compilers and remotely acessible mainframes all over again - people apparently never learn.

Re: Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code without telling users

#83

Post by sneilan1 »

aoaoaoans wrote: post #80
sneilan1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I focus more on reading code & prompting claude to write code for me at a high level. I also experiment a lot. I don't write code anymore by hand except in very rare cases. I ask claude for questions about the code to build understanding. I have it produce documentation, which is then consumed into other prompts. Often, claude code will need several minutes on a task so I start another task. My coding throughput on a…

Can you share some code? I work with a guy like this who claims this level of output but in reality he consumes massive amounts of other devs time in PR review. Are you doing a lot of broad throwaway tasks? I’ve had similar feelings when writing custom code for my editor, one off scripts, etc but it’s nothing I would ever put my professional reputation behind.

Sorry, most of my code is proprietary. However, I have a stock exchange project on my github I plan to rewrite in rust. I'm pretty busy now at work but I'll do that using claude code.

If your friend is consuming massive amounts of other dev time in PR reviews, maybe he has other issues. I'm willing to bet even without agentic coding, he would still be problem for your coworkers.

Sometimes I do broad throwaway tasks. For example I needed a rust lambda function that would do appsync event authorization for jwt tokens. All it needed to do was connect to aws secrets, load up the keys & check inbound requests. I basically had claude-code do everything from cdk to building/testing the rust function & deploying to staging. It worked great! However, I've certainly had my fair share of f-ups like I recently tried doing some work on the frontend with claude code and didn't realize it was doing useEffect everywhere!! Whoops. So I had to adapt and manage 2-3x claude code instances extremely closely to prevent that from happening again.

Re: Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code without telling users

#84

Post by klik99 »

pembrook wrote: post #71
alphager wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if Moore's law was still in effect and the computer resources required stayed the same and compute stayed as efficient per watt (neither is true), it would just halve compute costs every 18 months. You're able to read about people hitting $4000 costs/month on the $200 plan upthread. That's 8 years until it's cost effective. Are they really ready to burn money for 8 years?

Uber operated at a loss for 9 years. They're now a profitable, market-winning business. Amazon operated at a loss for 9 years, and barely turned a profit for over a decade longer than that. They're now one of the greatest businesses of all time. Spotify operated at a loss for 17 years until becoming profitable. Tesla operated at a loss for 17 years before turning a profit. Palantir operated at a loss for 20 years bef…

Those aren’t good comparisons.

Uber operated at a loss to destroy competition and raised prices after they did that.

Amazon (the retailer) did the same and leveraged their position to enter new more lucrative markets.

Dunno about Spotify, but Tesla and palantir both secured lucrative contracts and subsidies.

Anthropic is against companies with deeper pockets and can’t spend to destroy competition, their current business model can only survive if they reduce costs or raise prices. Something’s got to give

Re: Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code without telling users

#85

Post by bad_haircut72 »

I went from pro to max because I hve been hitting limits, I could tell they were reducing it because I used to go multiple hours on pro but now its like 3. Congrats Anthropic you got $100 more out of me, at the cost of irrecoverable goodwill

Re: Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code without telling users

#86

Post by ants_everywhere »

The other day I was doing major refactorings on two projects simultaneously while doing design work for two other projects. It occurred to me to check my API usage for Gemini and I had spent $200 that day already.

Users are no doubt working these things even harder than I am. There's no way they can be profitable at $200 a month with unlimited usage.

I think we're going to evolve into a system that intelligently allocates tasks based on cost. I think that's part of what openrouter is trying to do, but it's going to require a lot of context information to do the routing correctly.

Re: Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code without telling users

#87

Post by pembrook »

klik99 wrote: post #84
pembrook wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber operated at a loss for 9 years. They're now a profitable, market-winning business. Amazon operated at a loss for 9 years, and barely turned a profit for over a decade longer than that. They're now one of the greatest businesses of all time. Spotify operated at a loss for 17 years until becoming profitable. Tesla operated at a loss for 17 years before turning a profit. Palantir operated at a loss for 20 years bef…

Those aren’t good comparisons. Uber operated at a loss to destroy competition and raised prices after they did that. Amazon (the retailer) did the same and leveraged their position to enter new more lucrative markets. Dunno about Spotify, but Tesla and palantir both secured lucrative contracts and subsidies. Anthropic is against companies with deeper pockets and can’t spend to destroy competition, their current busin…

They are good comparisons. All startups go against incumbents/competitors with deeper pockets.

Re: Anthropic specifically, I tend to agree, hence why I'm saying the deeper pockets (eg. Google, Amazon, etc) are perfectly positioned to win here. However, big companies have a way of consistently missing the future due to internal incentive issues. Google is deathly afraid of cannibalizing their existing businesses.

Plus, there's many investors with deep pockets who would love to get in on Anthropic's next round if their technical lead proves to be durable over time (like 6 months in AI terms).

This fight is still early innings.

Re: Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code without telling users

#88

Post by hellcow »

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #85

I went from pro to max because I hve been hitting limits, I could tell they were reducing it because I used to go multiple hours on pro but now its like 3. Congrats Anthropic you got $100 more out of me, at the cost of irrecoverable goodwill

For what it's worth, when Cursor downgraded their Claude limits in the middle of my annual subscription term, I emailed them to ask for a pro-rated refund, and it was granted. You may be able to do something similar with Claude Code.

Changing the terms of the deal midway through a subscription to make it much less valuable is a really shady business practice, and I'm not sure it's legal.

Re: Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code without telling users

#90

Post by sneilan1 »

sneilan1 wrote: post #83
aoaoaoans wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share some code? I work with a guy like this who claims this level of output but in reality he consumes massive amounts of other devs time in PR review. Are you doing a lot of broad throwaway tasks? I’ve had similar feelings when writing custom code for my editor, one off scripts, etc but it’s nothing I would ever put my professional reputation behind.

Sorry, most of my code is proprietary. However, I have a stock exchange project on my github I plan to rewrite in rust. I'm pretty busy now at work but I'll do that using claude code. If your friend is consuming massive amounts of other dev time in PR reviews, maybe he has other issues. I'm willing to bet even without agentic coding, he would still be problem for your coworkers. Sometimes I do broad throwaway tasks.…

As a follow-up, I've gotten much much faster at modeling code in my mind and directly translating it into prompts. It really changes how you code! For each task, I'm extremely specific about what I want and depending on how closely claude does what I want, I change my specificity. Sometimes like with the lambda function, I can be high level and with my react.js codebase, due to it's lack of types (I know...) needs extra attention.

To be effective with agentic coding, you have to know when to go high level and low level. And have to accept that sometimes agentic coders need a lot of help! It all depends on how much context you give it.

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