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Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

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Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#241
post #5

There's definitely a way to use Claude code that is token conscious. I've tried throwing unsupervised agentic software factory workflows against the wall, and they burned through my tokens like nobody's business but didn't produce much. Supervised, human-in-the-loop process on the other hand is much more productive but doesn't consume nearly as much. Maybe that's why everyone's pushing agentic approaches so much.

> There's definitely a way to use Claude code that is token conscious. Colleague used Sonnet 4.6 on some pretty normal agentic coding tasks through AWS Bedrock to keep the data in the EU, 100 EUR usage in a single day. In comparison, the Mistral subscription costs about 20 EUR per month and we tested that for similar tasks it was okay , the usage got to around 10% of that monthly limit in a single day. Or Anthropic's…

I was a Mistral Le Chat Pro subscriber (the €20/month plan). Yesterday I hit my monthly limit. Switching to PAYG I burned through another €40 in one evening, working on the same project, with the same tasks.

I upgraded my plan last night to Mistral Le Chat Teams. This now costs me €60 per month for two users. Limits have been reset, but I have no idea now if my per seat limit is higher than the Pro plan, or if the limit is shared between the seats, it’s really not clear. I guess I will find out next month. The limits reset on the first of the month and I really hope I don’t hit them in the next seven days.

I use Mistral Vibe CLI and I’ve written and implemented a couple of new skills[1]. Caveman, based on an idea I found online somewhere, this skill removes all extraneous response text, including articles. Makes for some fun reading, but supposedly reduces output tokens significantly. Hash-anchors, this one is based on a concept from Dirac[2], reduces search failures and also includes multi-file dispatch. It will be hard to measure, but Vibe tells me these two should result in roughly a 40% reduction in token burn.

[1] https://codeberg.org/MimosaDev/skills

[2] https://dirac.run/

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#244
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little the opposite, what's the point of using an IDE with AI? I genuinely don't get it? These days I just use Claude Code Desktop or Claude Code in powershell. Standalone, not inside and IDE. Honestly, I'm using Desktop more and more as it gets more features. The IDE is for me. No AI in it at all. If I want to get Claude to do something specific to a file I just @ the file.

the obvious answer is because it's easier , faster, and more efficient to flip a true to false right in front of you than it is to prompt an llm. if your response is "my prompts don't produce code that needs values flipped, ever." then I would wager you're only touching very simple things with an LLM. for me I don't care about the token cost and prompt writing so much as the fact that it's just faster to change 0 to…

I just use Codex/Claude Code in one window and Neovim in another and navigate around using Niri’s keyboard shortcuts. I much prefer it to VS Code on a traditional desktop in almost every respect.

That said, I never tried copilot.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#245
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For months, Employees had the option to choose claude code or copilot. Now they dont. Underlying model choice still has no restrictions. Opus 4.6 is by far the most popular. there's still big $$$ bills going anthropic's way.

Curious if anyone around here stayed on 4.6 (having a choice to use 4.7)

I went to 4.7, didn't have a choice, found it unsatisfactory, then Claude quietly added in the option to use 4.6, so I'm back on 4.6, and I'm not the only one in my company.

I had far more hallucinations with 4.7 than 4.6.

I'll try it again after a few more months for them to get it right, but 4.6 is what changed my mind on LLMs as a tool, and 4.7 felt like a step backwards, so for now I'm sticking with something that has delivered me value, instead of arguing with a model ostensibly better that was making shit up 1 - 2 times a day. It was really disappointing.

I can give examples if needed, I screenshotted the most aggravating ones, but what worries me is which ones I didn't recognise.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4.7 is better if your spec is clearer. 4.6 is better if you give it more freedom doing it's tasks. 4.6 felt it'll steer off often if you give detailed specs than 4.7 though, so perhaps that's it

Agreed. 4.7 is a smarter but weirder model. It will get confused in unexpected ways, but when it's not confused it will perform better than 4.6. It's not a bad idea to skip it and wait until the next model release, but I personally will stick with 4.7.

How does their versionimg work? Because I've assumed that they're constantly tweaking their system prompts, I'm hoping in a couple of months, 4.7 will be improved over my first impressions- I caught significant hallucinations, something I'd rarely experienced with 4.6, if at all, I honestly can't remember one - but what I worried me was thebout the hallucinations I didn't catch.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could understand the appeal of using Claude Code inside VScode rather than Copilot. I feel like I'm missing something obvious.

I'm a little the opposite, what's the point of using an IDE with AI? I genuinely don't get it? These days I just use Claude Code Desktop or Claude Code in powershell. Standalone, not inside and IDE. Honestly, I'm using Desktop more and more as it gets more features. The IDE is for me. No AI in it at all. If I want to get Claude to do something specific to a file I just @ the file.

That’s like asking why anyone would use IDE autoformatting, linting, or build tools rather than constantly swapping to a terminal to run their command line versions. As in, why use tool integration in an integrated development environment? Because that’s the entire point. Classic IDE refactoring and code generation tools are limited to explicitly programmed operations, but a well-integrated LLM can do much more and smarter manipulations without you having to context switch and explain the context of what you want done.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#248
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For months, Employees had the option to choose claude code or copilot. Now they dont. Underlying model choice still has no restrictions. Opus 4.6 is by far the most popular. there's still big $$$ bills going anthropic's way.

Curious if anyone around here stayed on 4.6 (having a choice to use 4.7)

I have stuck with 4.6. I fully believe 4.7 can be smarter for truly complex and long running agentic use. But I prefer the more direct, literal mechanistic style and 4.6 seems to be peak Opus for that.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#249

From reading the article. They offered their developers both Claude code and Copilot. What they wanted was for them to use both and feedback which was better. The developers voted with their feet and didn’t use Copilot. What Microsoft were hoping was that the opposite would happen...

Wonder if Amazon will do the same with CC and Kiro now that we internally have access to both.

I think Kiro might have some “first mover” advantage internally, but CC feels better to use.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rage canceled Claude today. After 2 weeks of Claude getting progressively worse and worse, today was the final straw. I don't care if they have a phone app. The model is COMPLETE garbage after you subscribe long enough and they think they've "got you". I can't code on my phone if the model literally moves in the wrong direction and does the opposite of what I tell it to. If I wanted to make my code worse, I'd just…

I've seen a lot of this sentiment over the previous six months from people on reddit. I have yet to experience this myself as a developer with over 20 years of experience.

I see a lot of the "4.7 is a downgrade" sentiment. 4.7 does (mostly) what you ask it to do. 4.6 does what it thinks it should do. As someone with 20 years writing my own code I want the former, but the loud contingent online wants the latter.

When you're on a mature codebase with 500k+ lines of code, I haven't seen anything else be as effective as 4.7.

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