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I cancelled Claude: Token issues, declining quality, and poor support

nickyreinert.de

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Re: I cancelled Claude: Token issues, declining quality, and poor support

#221

Post by echelon »

kube-system wrote: post #103
echelon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open Source isn't even within 50% of what the SOTA models are. Benchmarks are toys, real world use is vastly different, and that's where they seriously lag. Why should anyone waste time on poorer results? I'd rather pay my $200/mo because my time matters. I'm not a poor college student anymore, and I need more return on my time. I'm not shitting on open weights here - I want open source to win. I just don't see how t…

There's going to be a day when we look back at $200/mo price tags and say "wow that was cheap". The breakeven at this price is 6 minutes of productivity per work day for an engineer making $200k.

Everyone is arguing why I'm wrong or that I should have presented more data.

You've got the real insight with this claim.

This is the way the world is moving. Open source isn't even going where the ball is being tossed. There is no leadership here.

You're spot on.

If the cost to deliver a unit of business automation is:

    A. $1M with human labor

    B. $700k human labor + open source models

    C. $500k human labor + $10,000 in claude code max (duration of project)

    D. $250k with humans + $200k claude code "mythos ultra"
The one that will get picked is option "D".

Your poor college students and hobbyists will be on option "B". But this won't be as productive as evidenced by the human labor input costs.

Option "C" will begin to disappear as models/compute get more expensive and capable.

Option "A" will be nonviable. Humans just won't be able to keep up.

Open source strictly depends on models decreasing their capability gap. But I'm not seeing it.

Targeting home hardware is the biggest smell. It's showing that this is non-serious, hobby tinkery and has no real role in business.

For open source to work and not to turn into a toy, the models need to target data center deployment.

Re: I cancelled Claude: Token issues, declining quality, and poor support

#222

Post by p_stuart82 »

Retr0id wrote: post #108
freedomben wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've thought of as well. The way the caps are implemented, it really disincentivizes engaged use. The 5-hour window especially is very awkward and disruptive. The net result is that I have to somewhat plan my day around when the 5-hour window will affect it. That by itself is a powerful disincentive from using Claude. It has also caused me to use different tools for things I previously would have us…

Another big one for me is that they dropped the cache TTLs. It is normal for me to come back to a session an hour later, but someone "autopilot"-ing won't have such gaps.

not just the cache though. every time you stop and come back, it basically reloads the whole session. if you just let it keep going, it counts like one smooth run. you hit the wall faster for actually checking its work.

Re: I cancelled Claude: Token issues, declining quality, and poor support

#223

Post by Aldipower »

wolttam wrote: post #106
taytus wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend Kimi k2.6 for your use. It is an excellent model at a fraction of the cost, and you can use Claude Code with it. I did a 1:1 map of all my Claude Code skills, and it feels like I never left Opus. Super happy with the results.

I was saying the same until DeepSeek v4 this morning... sorry, Kimi. The competition is intense!

Fascinated, a bummer that DeepSeek does not offer a DPA or opt-out for training. This renders it unusable for my use cases unfortunately. At least z.ai GLM has a somewhat DPA in Singapore.

Re: I cancelled Claude: Token issues, declining quality, and poor support

#224

Post by thomasmg »

sidrag22 wrote: post #220
raincole wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the day when LLM-assisted coding is commoditized Like yesterday? LLM-assisted coding is $100/mo. It looks very commoditized when most houses in developed world pay more for electricity than that. My definition of LLM-assisted coding is that you fully understand every change and every single line of the code. Otherwise it's vibe coding. And I believe if one is honest to this principle, it's very hard to deplete the…

> fully understand every change and every single line of the code. im probably just not being charitable enough to what you mean, but thats an absurd bar that almost nobody conforms to even if its fully handwritten. nothing would get done if they did. But again, my emphasis is on that im probably just not being charitable to what you mean.

Well that is how it mostly worked until recently... unless if the developer copied and pasted from stackoverflow without understanding much. Which did happen.

Re: I cancelled Claude: Token issues, declining quality, and poor support

#225

Post by gwerbin »

wg0 wrote: post #202

I write detailed specs. Multifile with example code. In markdown. Then hand over to Claude Sonnet. With hard requirements listed, I found out that the generated code missed requirements, had duplicate code or even unnecessary code wrangling data (mapping objects into new objects of narrower types when won't be needed) along with tests that fake and work around to pass. So turns out that I'm not writing code but I'm r…

Or just don't use AI to write code. Use it as a code reviewer assistant along with your usual test-lint development cycle. Use it to help evaluate 3rd party libraries faster. Use it to research new topics. Use it to help draft RFCs and design documents. Use it as a chat buddy when working on hard problems.

I think the AI companies all stink to high heaven and the whole thing being built on copyright infringement still makes me squirm. But the latest models are stupidly smart in some cases. It's starting to feel like I really do have a sci-fi AI assistant that I can just reach for whenever I need it, either to support hard thinking or to speed up or entirely avoid drudgery and toil.

You don't have to buy into the stupid vibecoding hype to get productivity value out of the technology.

You of course don't have to use it at all. And you don't owe your money to any particular company. Heck for non-code tasks the local-capable models are great. But you can't just look at vibecoding and dismiss the entire category of technology.

Re: I cancelled Claude: Token issues, declining quality, and poor support

#226

Post by PeterStuer »

I'm on max x5. No limit problems, but I am definetly feeling the decline. Early stopping and being hellbent on taking shortcuts being the main culprits, closely followed by over optimistic (stale) caching (audit your hooks!).

All mostly mitigatable by rigorous audits and steering, but man, it should not have to be.

Re: I cancelled Claude: Token issues, declining quality, and poor support

#227

Post by nananana9 »

drunken_thor wrote: post #20

AI services are only minorly incentivized to reduce token usage. They want high token usage, it makes you pay more. They are going to continually test where the limit is, what is the max token usage before you get angry. All AI companies will continue to trade places for token use and cost as cost increases. We are in tepid water pretending it is a bath pretending we aren’t about to be boiled frogs.

Up to a point. There is incentive when they get to the point where they literally can't serve their userbase and customers start leaving.

Re: I cancelled Claude: Token issues, declining quality, and poor support

#228

Post by scuderiaseb »

wg0 wrote: post #202

I write detailed specs. Multifile with example code. In markdown. Then hand over to Claude Sonnet. With hard requirements listed, I found out that the generated code missed requirements, had duplicate code or even unnecessary code wrangling data (mapping objects into new objects of narrower types when won't be needed) along with tests that fake and work around to pass. So turns out that I'm not writing code but I'm r…

I must be doing something very different from everyone else, but I write what I want and how I want it and Opus 4.7 plans it for me, then I carefully review. Often times I need to validate and check things, sometimes I’ve revised the plan multiple times. Then implementation which I still use Opus for because I get a warning that my current model holds the cache so Sonnet shouldn’t implement. And honestly, I’m mostly within my Pro subscription, granted I also have ChatGPT Plus but I’ve mostly only used that as the chat/quick reference model. But yeah takes some time to read and understand everything, a lot of the time I make manual edits too.

Re: I cancelled Claude: Token issues, declining quality, and poor support

#229

Post by andrewjvb »

sidrag22 wrote: post #220
raincole wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the day when LLM-assisted coding is commoditized Like yesterday? LLM-assisted coding is $100/mo. It looks very commoditized when most houses in developed world pay more for electricity than that. My definition of LLM-assisted coding is that you fully understand every change and every single line of the code. Otherwise it's vibe coding. And I believe if one is honest to this principle, it's very hard to deplete the…

> fully understand every change and every single line of the code. im probably just not being charitable enough to what you mean, but thats an absurd bar that almost nobody conforms to even if its fully handwritten. nothing would get done if they did. But again, my emphasis is on that im probably just not being charitable to what you mean.

It's a good point. To me this really comes down to the economics of the software being written.

If it's low-stakes, then the required depth to accept the code is also low.

Re: I cancelled Claude: Token issues, declining quality, and poor support

#230

Post by subscribed »

isjcjwjdkwjxk wrote: post #45
drunken_thor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah so we are only supposed to use this work tool outside of work hours?

“Work tool” Please. This is a toy. A novel little tech-toy. If you depend on it now for doing your job then, frankly, you deserve to have your rug pulled now and then.

If you didn't found the way to use the tool constructively, keep trying.

If you didn't try to use it to work for you, that's okay, but maybe try once more? It does work and adds value. It's a non-standard and weirdly flexible tool with limitations.

...but in retrospect, seeing how you finished your comment, maybe you really want to remain angry and misinformed.

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