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Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

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Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#11

Post by ctoth »

I was all set to be pissed off, "you can't tell me what I can make with your product once you've sold it to me!" but no... This outrage bait hinges on the definition of "use"

You can use Claude Code to write code to make a competitor for Claude Code. What you cannot do is reverse engineer the way the Claude Code harness uses the API to build your own version that taps into stuff like the max plan. Which? makes sense?

From the thread:

> A good rule of thumb is, are you launching a Claude code oauth screen and capturing the token. That is against terms of service.

Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#13

Post by mcintyre1994 »

https://xcancel.com/SIGKITTEN/status/2009697031422652461

This tweet reads as nonsense to me

It's quoting:

> This is why the supported way to use Claude in your own tools is via the API. We genuinely want people building on Claude, including other coding agents and harnesses, and we know developers have broad preferences for different tool ergonomics. If you're a maintainer of a third-party tool and want to chat about integration paths, my DMs are open.

And the linked tweet says that such integration is against their terms.

The highlighted term says that you can't use their services to develop a competing product/service. I don't read that as the same as integrating their API into a competing product/service. It does seem to suggest you can't develop a competitor to Claude Code using Claude Code, as the title says, which is a bit silly, but doesn't contradict the linked tweet.

I suspect they have this rule to stop people using Claude to train other models, or competitors testing outputs etc, but it is silly in the context of Claude Code.

Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#14

Post by whimsicalism »

ctoth wrote: post #11

I was all set to be pissed off, "you can't tell me what I can make with your product once you've sold it to me!" but no... This outrage bait hinges on the definition of "use" You can use Claude Code to write code to make a competitor for Claude Code. What you cannot do is reverse engineer the way the Claude Code harness uses the API to build your own version that taps into stuff like the max plan. Which? makes sense?…

under the ToS, no - you cannot use claude code to make a competitor to claude code. but you’re right that that appears to mostly be unenforced.

that said, it is absolutely being enforced against other big model labs who are mostly banned from using claude.

Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#15

Post by whimsicalism »

falloutx wrote: post #12

Opencode is much better anyway and it doesnt change its workflow every couple weeks.

i find cursor cli significantly better than opencode right now, unfortunately.

e: for those downvoting, i would earnestly like to hear your thoughts. i want opencode and similar solutions to win.

Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#16

Post by gpm »

starkeeper wrote: post #5

[flagged]

Where the TOS allows them to, I would assume they are (and they aren't trade secrets anymore since reasonable measures weren't taken to protect them). Where the TOS forbids them from doing so - I'd generally assume the reputational risk is not worth the marginal value that could be extracted from the IP and trade secrets. Especially for companies with huge other businesses like Google. I'd worry more about Anthropic and OpenAI just because there's not this other huge billion dollar business that relies on trust. If I had trade secrets worth billions where money could easily be extracted from them (I'm thinking something like a hedgefunds current trading strategy) the trust wouldn't extend that far even for Google.

I also find OpenAI's past business dealings suspect (with regards to effectively stealing value from the public non-profit and transferring it into a privately owned company) which makes me trust them less than Anthropic.

I'd assume the NSA has access to anything they are interested in that you send to a US company.

Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#18

Post by fgonzag »

falloutx wrote: post #12

Opencode is much better anyway and it doesnt change its workflow every couple weeks.

Yeah, honestly this is a bad move on anthropic's part. I don't think their moat is as big as they think it is. They are competing against opencode + ACP + every other model out there, and there are quite a few good ones (even open weight ones).

Opus might be currently the best model out there, and CC might be the best tool out of the commercial alternatives, but once someone switches to open code + multiple model providers depending on the task, they are going to have difficulty winning them back considering pricing and their locked down ecosystem.

I went from max 20x and chatgpt pro to Claude pro and chat gpt plus + open router providers, and I have now cancelled Claude pro and gpt plus, keeping only Gemini pro (super cheap) and using open router models + a local ai workstation I built using minimax m2.1 and glam 4.7. I use Gemini as the planner and my local models as the churners. Works great, the local models might not be as good as opus 4.5 or sonnet 4.7, but they are consistent which is something I had been missing with all commercial providers.

Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#19

Post by nerdponx »

starkeeper wrote: post #5

[flagged]

I think the concern for the AI companies is that they're going to get sued into oblivion if they ever get found out. The bigger concern is not the AI companies doing it themselves, but insiders finding it in the chat logs and selling it on the black market.

They're definitely going to monetize personal accounts with targeted advertising though. Nothing is stopping "ChatGPT Suggested" (i.e. sponsored) links in chat replies.

Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#20

Post by tcdent »

ctoth wrote: post #11

I was all set to be pissed off, "you can't tell me what I can make with your product once you've sold it to me!" but no... This outrage bait hinges on the definition of "use" You can use Claude Code to write code to make a competitor for Claude Code. What you cannot do is reverse engineer the way the Claude Code harness uses the API to build your own version that taps into stuff like the max plan. Which? makes sense?…

This whole thing got blown out of proportion because the devs of third party harnesses that use the oauth API never disclosed that they were already actively sidestepping what is a very obvious message that the oauth API is for Claude Code only. What changed recently is that they added more restrictions for the shape of the payloads it accepts, not that they just started adding restrictions for the first time.

TLDR You cannot reverse engineer the oauth API without encountering this message:

https://tcdent-pub.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/cc_oauth_api_e...

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