Anthropic's Method to Losing Goodwill in a Few Easy Steps • Hacker News Board

Re: Anthropic's Method to Losing Goodwill in a Few Easy Steps

#141

Post by btown » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:17 PM UTC

ac29 wrote: post #25

tekacs wrote: post #7

It worth noting that – just to add to the confusion – they apparently cancelled the June 15th change just before it was due to go live: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/15036540-use-the-clau... https://the-decoder.com/anthropic-backs-off-unpopular-billin... So... maybe we can still use third party harnesses with Claude Code subscriptions... for now? Until they change their mind again?

> So... maybe we can still use third party harnesses with Claude Code subscriptions... for now? The way I read this is: yes, if the third party harness uses Anthropic's Agent SDK. Most of them do not, AFAIK, and are still against ToS (though maybe its not enforced for now)

Something that many don't realize is that Claude Desktop and the Agent SDK are both just wrappers around pools of CLI instances, literally running `claude --input-format stream-json --output-format stream-json`.

So this wasn't even about third-party harnesses that replace the toolset Claude has access to, and try to call the Claude API with subsidized credentials. No, this was literally a blessing for their desktop UI's over others, all driving Claude Code's CLI at the end of the day.

To the broader point, it's hard not to see that as arbitrary and borderline spyware. Software that sniffs the context in which it's executed and uses that to phone home about billing is the type of thing you'd expect from the most corporate parts of the gaming industry, not a frontier lab, but here we are.

Re: Anthropic's Method to Losing Goodwill in a Few Easy Steps

#142

Post by raheelrjunaid » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

sunnybeetroot wrote: post #89

I don’t get the comparison images; they’re of Claude’s start up and open code’s code diff and the author then claims that they prefer open code’s based off those images.

You're correct and if I showed Claude Code's diff, it would still just be an inline editor. I prefer OpenCode for its sidebar UI and that it isn't riddled with unresolved issues.

Re: Anthropic's Method to Losing Goodwill in a Few Easy Steps

#143

Post by Amir6 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

It's been almost 3 weeks since my Claude account has been suspended with ZERO explanation. They initially gave an appeal review timeline of 10 days which has long passed and again no accountability or even an estimated date. Please be careful putting your trust and professional life on such tools! More details below;

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48597861

Re: Anthropic's Method to Losing Goodwill in a Few Easy Steps

#144

Post by internet2000 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:20 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #137

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should I pay an order of magnitude more to use pi.dev? The monthly plans are heavily subsidized by the API users - why should Anthropic subsidize your use of pi.dev?

Where is the difference when I hit my 5 hour limit or weekly limit with Claude Code compared to PI or OpenCode?

If you do it outside of Claude Code, you're not using their software, which is the intended outcome of the subsidy.

Re: Anthropic's Method to Losing Goodwill in a Few Easy Steps

#145

Post by JeremyNT » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

hbn wrote: post #108

Feels weird to be complaining about this stuff when all of these AI companies are still haemorrhaging money to offer these services. You can say it's inconvenient but it's hard to argue they're being greedy when they do these things to merely lose a little bit less money on every subscription they sell.

> You can say it's inconvenient but it's hard to argue they're being greedy when they do these things to merely lose a little bit less money on every subscription they sell.

TFA is probably overly inflammatory but it's worth pointing out how this loss leader cycle works.

These companies are not your friends, they're burning VC money to subsidize services before the eventual rug pull, enshittification is coming.

Re: Anthropic's Method to Losing Goodwill in a Few Easy Steps

#146

Post by andrewmutz » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:27 PM UTC

harry19023 wrote: post #118

internet2000 wrote: post #42

They're subsidizing their tokens as long as you use their software. That's a fair exchange, I never understood why people took issue with it. If you don't want to get locked in to Claude Code, you can pay more. Just like you can pay more for an unlocked non-carrier subsidized phone. (Which I personally do.)

Agreed. The level of entitlement around how we all deserve to use a product in a category that didn't even exist 12 months ago with increasing performance at the same price forever is insane.

I also think that the people who are complaining loudest about Anthropics pricing and changes are the customers Anthropic is least interested in retaining.

From my experience people who complain loudly about the price tend to be people who are either (1) working primarily on hobby projects so are unwilling to pay much for Claude Code or (2) using astronomical amount of tokens through elaborately orchestrated multi-agent setups that only make sense when someone else is paying the bill.

Re: Anthropic's Method to Losing Goodwill in a Few Easy Steps

#147

Post by m_ke » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:29 PM UTC

netruk44 wrote: post #99

datakan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably wouldn't matter if you had the funds either since MacStudios are 3-4 months out for purchase.

And also the weights for GLM 5.2 are 1.5 TB. The only Studios Apple sells today are hard-capped to 64 GB (M4 Max) or 96 GB (M3 Ultra) only. You'd need at least 24 new M4 Max Studios, or 16 new M3 Ultra Studios, or 3 used 512 GB M3 Ultra Studios just to power one GLM 5.2 instance. And even then, you're probably looking at Personally, I think it makes way more sense to pay a model provider $3/1M tokens.

Deep Learning models are designed to get max throughput on GPUs, which ends up being batched workloads.

You'll never get proper price competitive utilization on personal hardware vs a cloud inference provider that can batch and pipeline requests optimally to maximize utilization, unless you yourself start running batch jobs.

Even once local hardware and models catch up to todays frontiers, by that time there will be 10x better cluster sized models available at a similar discount.

Re: Anthropic's Method to Losing Goodwill in a Few Easy Steps

#148

Post by raheelrjunaid » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:32 PM UTC

supermatt wrote: post #28

> Your Claude subscription—which is a cheaper version of the Anthropic API—is restricted to use with the Claude Code CLI/Desktop, Claude CoWork, or @Claude in Slack. Thats not true at all. You can use the Agent SDK [1], which uses your subscription [2]. I use it via ACP [3] with custom system prompts and tooling. I have found it very powerful and flexible. It has its own agent loop, of course, so maybe thats the limi…

You're correct, but my point was that it was going to shift to API pricing. Although it looks like that's been put on hold as others have pointed out.

Re: Anthropic's Method to Losing Goodwill in a Few Easy Steps

#149

Post by raheelrjunaid » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:33 PM UTC

uberman wrote: post #19

Zambyte wrote: post #2

Not sure why this was flagged, Anthropic has obviously been burning bridges. I thought this line was funny though: > If you want to autocomplete, like I do, you don’t need Fable, or even Opus; Sonnet works fine. It reads like "if you want to go to the grocery store, you don't need a space shuttle, or even a SR-71 Blackbird; a Cessna works fine."

While I did not flag this, it is clearly a hit piece. Why write an article to publish in July that does not include June data? Unless of course one looks at June uptime and finds that does not align with their story.

I began writing this article a while back and forgot to update the screenshot. The June uptime has significantly improved, but that may not always be the case

Re: Anthropic's Method to Losing Goodwill in a Few Easy Steps

#150

Post by movpasd » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 3:54 PM UTC

I don't expect technology companies to do the right thing by the consumer. There is a niche for companies or NGOs that manage to stick to their core mission, but the incentive structure for software (very high capital cost, near zero marginal cost, huge opportunities for rent-seeking) is just always going to push them to these behaviours. It's not a conspiracy theory, either. VCs deliberately bank on this --- they have to if they want to get return on investment.

By all means, put pressure on companies who are doing this. Public opinion does matter. But the fundamentals are just not going to change without regulation. It is a tough nut to crack.