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Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

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Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#361

Post by jen20 »

jmalicki wrote: post #190
goosejuice wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is conceptually true for subscription services in general, but thats not why they are making this change. There's a 5 hour limit and a weekly limit. Those are hard token limits. Everyone on a plan pays for the max set of tokens in that plan. The limits manage capacity. The solution to that isn't a change of ToS, it's adjusting the limits. In other words this is about Anthropic subsidizing their own…

You aren't paying to be using that limit all of the time. You are paying to be using that limit some of the time. There are 5 hour windows when you are sleeping and can't use it. There are weekend limits. Theoretically you can max out every 5 hour window, but they lose money on that. It's structured so users can have bursts of unlimited usage, and spend ~15% of the theoretical max cap, and that's still cheaper than a…

> You aren't paying to be using that limit all of the time.

The erosion of the norm of things doing what they advertise rather than being weasel-worded BS is particularly unfortunate, and leads to claims like this.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#362

Post by philistine »

goosejuice wrote: post #160
jesse_dot_id wrote: post #73

There seem to be a ton of people who don't understand how subscription services work. Every single one of them oversells their capacity. The power users that use the services a lot are subsidized by those who don't use it as much, which tends to be the vast majority of the user base. OpenClaw is an autonomous power user. The growing adoption of this walking attack surface was either going to A) cause the cost of Clau…

What you're saying is conceptually true for subscription services in general, but thats not why they are making this change. There's a 5 hour limit and a weekly limit. Those are hard token limits. Everyone on a plan pays for the max set of tokens in that plan. The limits manage capacity. The solution to that isn't a change of ToS, it's adjusting the limits. In other words this is about Anthropic subsidizing their own…

You guys are arguing on the reality of a subscription, but Anthropic still resides in the coocoo make-up world of growth at all costs backed up by unfathomable investments. They're not acting rationally by trying to present a good product with reasonable backend fundamentals. They're just trying to maintain the money loss to what they have set aside for the quarter. OpenClaw was not planned for, and thus must be fought.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#364

Post by fluoridation »

Yokohiii wrote: post #354
fluoridation wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can't create a tiered paid plan for the whole world that fits everyone. I mean, you can. Electricity is already sold that way. Subscribers with uncharacteristic usage spikes don't get blackouts, they get a slightly larger bill, and perhaps get moved up a tier.

Very valid. My comment was fixated around the fact that big tech has the addiction to have subscriptions for everything. It's common that you provide generic subscription plans for the masses and supply "call us" custom plans for the specific (usually corporate) needs. If anthropic doesn't provide that or vibe coders are too cheap to do that, then those are issues, but the subscription models are itself valid. It is…

It's pretty stupid because as others in this thread have pointed out it's already not a flat plan. Even from their side it makes zero sense to bill things this way rather than based on usage. It's not like a VPS where your VM shares the hardware, which consumes electricity more or less regardless of what you use the machine for.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#365

Post by adastra22 »

firloop wrote: post #47

This is slightly different from what OpenCode was banned from doing; they were a separate harness grabbing a user’s Claude Code session and pretending to be Claude Code. OpenClaw was still using Claude Code as the harness (via claude -p)[0]. I understand why Anthropic is doing this (and they’ve made it clear that building products around claude -p is disallowed) but I fear Conductor will be next. [0]: See “Option B:…

Has there been an actual change to their ToS? As of the last change which I saw reach HN, a week or so ago, `claude -p` was still in compliance with the Claude Code ToS. Has that language changed?

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#366

Post by thegagne »

janalsncm wrote: post #133

I got fed up with Claude code limits and have been using a combination of qwen3-coder, gemma4, and qwen3-vl locally. Gets me 90% of the way there and CC is still around for now if I need it. Btw even at insane markups $200/mo means GPUs break even pretty fast.

Which harness and how which GPU?

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#367

Post by Ifkaluva »

I think this is why the LLM era will not produce as much automation as people think.

We have had the ability to automate browser activities for a long time—but, online service providers don’t want to be behind a layer of automation, which is why captchas were invented.

Automating things on the Internet has never been a technology obstacle, it has been a social one.

I don’t see how anything has changed!

In fact I recently received an updated ToS from eBay saying I am not allowed to use an AI agent to buy stuff on their site. Just a matter of time until others follow suit!

Edit: I misunderstood what was happening. Thanks to the comment below for clarifying.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#368

Post by NewsaHackO »

smallerfish wrote: post #345

> for third-party harnesses What's the exact definition of third-party harnesses? They have an Agent SDK in Claude Code that can be used. Are they trying to say that only Anthropic products can use pro/max plans?

When another program is doing direct tool calling instead of delegating it to Claude.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#369

Post by bitwize »

dimmke wrote: post #285
rovr138 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They have to be honest about what they can offer for $200 Their expectation must have been a human using the service at a human capacity. This is different from an automated agent orchestrating a ton of different agents at the same time doing a lot of things. There is a difference.

If people are finding new ways to use AI, they should change how they bill. Banning third party harnesses is bad for a lot of reasons - it looks like they're trying to force people to use their software. Strategically it might make sense - gives them a tiny moat if their models ever slip - but it discourages the breakneck pace of innovation and the long term effect is that their customers (largely highly skilled with…

Start paying by the token if you want to use these tools. Simple as.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#370

Post by jen20 »

cowlby wrote: post #164
jesse_dot_id wrote: post #73

There seem to be a ton of people who don't understand how subscription services work. Every single one of them oversells their capacity. The power users that use the services a lot are subsidized by those who don't use it as much, which tends to be the vast majority of the user base. OpenClaw is an autonomous power user. The growing adoption of this walking attack surface was either going to A) cause the cost of Clau…

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

You can still use it with an OpenAI subscription (for now at least), and the models aren't substantially worse.
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