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Anthropic downgraded cache TTL on March 6th

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Re: Anthropic downgraded cache TTL on March 6th

#282
post #129

Has anybody else noticed a pretty significant shift in sentiment when discussing Claude/Codex with other engineers since even just a few months ago? Specifically because of the secret/hidden nature of these changes. I keep getting the sense that people feel like they have no idea if they are getting the product that they originally paid for, or something much weaker, and this sentiment seems to be constantly spreadin…

My working theory is that all models are approximately the same, and the variance in quality mostly depends on how long they think for. So the trick is to always set to max, and then begin every task with “this is an extremely complex task, do not complete it without extensive deep thinking and research” or whatever. You’re basically fighting a battle to make the model think more, against the defaults getting more an…

My experience has been that this isn’t generally true, mainly because worse models pursue red herrings or get confused and stuck. a better model will get to the correct solution in fewer tokens, and my surface-level understanding of how RL works supports this.

Re: Anthropic downgraded cache TTL on March 6th

#283
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, off the top of my head: - Banning OpenClaw users (within their rights, of course, but bad optics) - Banning 3rd party harnesses in general (ditto) (claude -p still works on the sub but I get the feeling like if I actually use it, I'll get my Anthropic acct. nuked. Would be great to get some clarity on this. If I invoke it from my Telegram bot, is that an unauthorized 3rd party harness?) - Lowering reasoning eff…

Perhaps Anthropic should put a freeze on new signups until they can increase capacity. This is the best kind of problem for a business, I'm cheering for them.

If there is one thing that is crystal clear, its that LLM providers will always take your money, no matter how bad the service is.

Re: Anthropic downgraded cache TTL on March 6th

#284

Has anybody else noticed a pretty significant shift in sentiment when discussing Claude/Codex with other engineers since even just a few months ago? Specifically because of the secret/hidden nature of these changes. I keep getting the sense that people feel like they have no idea if they are getting the product that they originally paid for, or something much weaker, and this sentiment seems to be constantly spreadin…

Yes. Anthropic is burning much of the goodwill they built up in contrast to OAI, and I personally am taking it as a sign to limit dependencies. Luckily for me I am not at all dependent on frontier models, and it's increasingly apparent that nobody else is too. It looks like the spreadsheet-touchers over at Anthropic won out over the brand leaders, which is too bad as good will can be a trench if you don't abuse your…

I think on HN we always underestimate how much momentum matters. Anthropic has so much clout and mindshare that even if they continue burning goodwill and everyone on HN ditches Claude Code and stops recommending it, they will still be revenue leader for years to come. Those enterprise contracts aren’t month-to-month.

Re: Anthropic downgraded cache TTL on March 6th

#285

Has anybody else noticed a pretty significant shift in sentiment when discussing Claude/Codex with other engineers since even just a few months ago? Specifically because of the secret/hidden nature of these changes. I keep getting the sense that people feel like they have no idea if they are getting the product that they originally paid for, or something much weaker, and this sentiment seems to be constantly spreadin…

Just anecdotal, but I was using Claude Code for everything a few months ago, and it seemed great. Now, it is making a ton of mistakes, doing the wrong thing, misunderstanding context, and just generally being unusable. I now have been using Codex and everything has been great (I still swap back and forth but generally to check things out.) My theory is just that the models are great after release to get people switch…

Part hypecycle, part desperate attempts to rein in usage

Re: Anthropic downgraded cache TTL on March 6th

#286

Has anybody else noticed a pretty significant shift in sentiment when discussing Claude/Codex with other engineers since even just a few months ago? Specifically because of the secret/hidden nature of these changes. I keep getting the sense that people feel like they have no idea if they are getting the product that they originally paid for, or something much weaker, and this sentiment seems to be constantly spreadin…

That's a seasonal phenomenon. You can save this comment and look back three to six months later. By the time people will be like "is it just me or ChatGPT has been so bad lately?"

If you don't believe me you can search HN posts about Codex/Claude six months ago.

Re: Anthropic downgraded cache TTL on March 6th

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I’ve seen this too. It’s difficult for me to tell if the complaints are due to a legitimate undisclosed nerf of Claude, or whether it’s just the initial awe of Opus 4.6 fading and people increasingly noticing its mistakes.

Just one more anecdote: I'm on the enterprise team plan so a decent amount of usage. In March I could use Opus all day and it was getting great results. Since the last week of March and into April, I've had sessions where I maxed out session usage under 2 hours and it got stuck in overthinking loops, multiple turns of realising the same thing, dozens of paragraphs of "But wait, actually I need to do x" with slight va…

I'm also an enterprise user and this has been my experience exactly. Same asks, same code bases, same models, much worse results. Everyone on my team is expressing the same thing.

Not only that, but the lack of transparency about what's happening, in clear and simple terms, directly from Anthropic is concerning.

I've already told my org's higher ups that in the current situation we're not close to getting our money's worth with these models.

Re: Anthropic downgraded cache TTL on March 6th

#288

Has anybody else noticed a pretty significant shift in sentiment when discussing Claude/Codex with other engineers since even just a few months ago? Specifically because of the secret/hidden nature of these changes. I keep getting the sense that people feel like they have no idea if they are getting the product that they originally paid for, or something much weaker, and this sentiment seems to be constantly spreadin…

Just anecdotal, but I was using Claude Code for everything a few months ago, and it seemed great. Now, it is making a ton of mistakes, doing the wrong thing, misunderstanding context, and just generally being unusable. I now have been using Codex and everything has been great (I still swap back and forth but generally to check things out.) My theory is just that the models are great after release to get people switch…

Is it the models themselves or the tools around them? There's that patch[1] that floats around for Claude Code that's supposed to solve a lot of these problems by adjusting its tool-level prompts. Also, if it were the models themselves, wouldn't Cursor users have the same complaints (do they? I haven't heard anything but the only Cursor users I talk to are coworkers)?

I think it's more likely they're trying to optimize the Claude Code prompts to reduce load on their system and have overcorrected at the cost of quality.

1: https://gist.github.com/roman01la/483d1db15043018096ac3babf5...

Re: Anthropic downgraded cache TTL on March 6th

#289
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, off the top of my head: - Banning OpenClaw users (within their rights, of course, but bad optics) - Banning 3rd party harnesses in general (ditto) (claude -p still works on the sub but I get the feeling like if I actually use it, I'll get my Anthropic acct. nuked. Would be great to get some clarity on this. If I invoke it from my Telegram bot, is that an unauthorized 3rd party harness?) - Lowering reasoning eff…

Why were third party harnesses banned? Surely they'd want sticking power over the ecosystem.

> Why were third party harnesses banned? Surely they'd want sticking power over the ecosystem.

Third-party harnesses are the exact opposite of stickiness!

Ditching Claude Code for a third party harness while using the Claude Code subscription means it's trivial to switch to a different model when you {run out of credits | find a cheaper token provider | find a better model}.

Re: Anthropic downgraded cache TTL on March 6th

#290
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's all circumstantial but everything points towards "desperately trying to cut costs". I have been wondering if it's more geared at reducing resource usage, given that at the moment there's a known constraint on AI datacenter expansion capability. Perhaps they are struggling to meet demand?

It’s more that Anthropic knows that the models themselves are non-sticky, and the real moat is in the ecosystem around it. It only makes sense for them to get users to use their ecosystem, rather than other tools.

See: Claude Cowork trying to establish an entire new group of people in their ecosystem.
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