Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode • Hacker News Board

Re: Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode

#31

Post by paxys » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 1:03 AM UTC

shusaku wrote: post #23

paxys wrote: post #22

Meh, if you want access to the API then pay for the API. It's as simple as that.

It’s because their models burn tokens like crazy. API use is way too expensive Edit: or should I say, the subscription is artificially cheap

While the subscription is definitely subsidized (technically cross-subsidized, because the subsidy is coming from users who pay but barely use it), Claude Code also does a ton of prompt caching that reduces LLM dependency. I have done many hours-long coding sessions and built entire websites using the latest Opus and the final tally came to like $4, whereas without caching it would have been $25-30.

Re: Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode

#32

Post by _boffin_ » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 1:03 AM UTC

syntaxing wrote: post #27

While Anthropic can choose whatever tool uses their api or subscription but I never fully understood what they gain from having the subscription explicitly only work for claude code. Is the issue that it disincentivizes the use of their API?

Are they ZDR with prompts and completions and possibly rely on usage statistics from their CLI to infer how people are using it?

Re: Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode

#33

Post by ankit219 » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 1:04 AM UTC

syntaxing wrote: post #27

While Anthropic can choose whatever tool uses their api or subscription but I never fully understood what they gain from having the subscription explicitly only work for claude code. Is the issue that it disincentivizes the use of their API?

The issue is that claude code is cheap because it uses API's unused capacity. These kind of circumventions hurt them both ways, one they dont know how to estimate api demand, and two, the nature of other harnesses is more bursty (eg: parallel calls) compared to claude code, so it screws over other legit users. Claude code very rarely makes parallel calls for context commands etc. but these ones do.

re the whole unused capacity is the nature of inference on GPUs. In any cluster, you can batch inputs (ie takes same time for say 1 query or 100 as they can be parallelized) and now continuous batching[1] exists. With API and bursty nature of requests, clusters would be at 40%-50% of peak API capacity. Makes sense to divert them to subscriptions. Reduces api costs in future, and gives anthropic a way to monetize unused capacity. But if everyone does it, then there is no unused capacity to manage and everyone loses.

[1]: https://huggingface.co/blog/continuous_batching

Re: Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode

#34

Post by paxys » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 1:05 AM UTC

syntaxing wrote: post #27

While Anthropic can choose whatever tool uses their api or subscription but I never fully understood what they gain from having the subscription explicitly only work for claude code. Is the issue that it disincentivizes the use of their API?

Owning the client gives them full control over which model to use for which query, prompt caching, rate limiting and lots more. So they can drive massive savings for the ~same output over just giving unrestricted access to the API.

Re: Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode

#35

Post by lemming » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 1:06 AM UTC

Obviously Anthropic are within their rights to do this, but I don’t think their moat is as big as they think it is. I’ve cancelled my max subscription and have gone over to ChatGPT pro, which is now explicitly supporting this use case.

Re: Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode

#36

Post by recursive » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 1:06 AM UTC

bflesch wrote: post #19

When using their web UI with Firefox and ublock origin it regularly freezes the tab when the answer is written out. Someone at Anthropic had to create a letter-by-letter typing animation with GIF image and sentry callbacks every five seconds, which ends up in an infinite loop. I've seen reports about this bug affecting Firefox users since Q3 2025. They were reported over various channels. Not a fan of them prioritizi…

How can you be sure the issue is not with ublock?

Re: Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode

#37

Post by ehsanu1 » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 1:06 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #26

Given that Claude Code is a scriptable CLI tool with an SDK, why can't OpenCode just call Claude instead of reusing its auth tokens?

You can't control it to the level of individual LLM requests and orchestration of those. And that is very valuable, practically required, to build a tool like this. Otherwise, you just have a wrapper over another big program and can barely do anything interesting/useful to make it actually work better.

Re: Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode

#38

Post by bflesch » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 1:07 AM UTC

refulgentis wrote: post #2

I believe LLM providers should ultimately be utilities from a consumer perspective, like water suppliers. I own the faucet, washer, bathtub, and can switch suppliers at will. I’ve been working on a FOSS client for them for nearly three years. I hope that why the following is purely a factual distinction, not an excuse or an attempt to empathize. The difference between the other entities named and OpenCode is this: Op…

You're hitting an important point. I might go on a tangent here.

It's up to operating systems to offer a content consumption experience for end users which reverses the role of platforms back to their original, most basic offers. They all try to force you into their applications which are full of tracking, advertisements, upsells, and anti-consumer interface design decisions.

Ideally the operating system would untangle the content from these applications and allow the end user to consume the content in a way that they want. For example Youtube offers search, video and comments. The operating system should extract these three things and create a good UI around it, while discarding the rest. Playlists and viewing history can all be managed in the offline part of the application. Spotify offers music, search and lyrics but they want you to watch videos and use social media components in their very opinionated UIs, while actively fighting you to create local backup of your music library.

Software like adblockers, yt-dlp and streamlink are already solving parts of these issues by untangling content from providers for local consumption in a trusted environment. For me the fight by Anthropic against OpenCode fits into this picture.

These companies are acting hostile even towards paying customers, each of them trying to build their walled gardens.

Re: Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode

#39

Post by charcircuit » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 1:07 AM UTC

plusplusungood wrote: post #13

mr_mitm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they want you to use the API subscription if you want to use their service with OpenCode. It's possible, just more expensive.

That is analogous to the water company charging you more if you use a faucet from another company. It's not a fair competition. That's why we are supposed to have legislation to regulate that utilities and common carriers can't behave that way.

It wasn't just hooking up a new faucet. It was hijacking an API key intended for ClaudeCode specifically. So in this metaphor it would be hooking up a secondary water pipe from the water company intended only for sprinklers they provide to your main water supply. The water company notices abnormal usage coming from the sprinkler water pipe and shuts it off, while leaving your primary water pipe alone.

Re: Anthropic Explicitly Blocking OpenCode

#40

Post by ankit219 » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 1:07 AM UTC

I do not understand the stubbornness with wanting to use the auth part. On local, just call the claude code from your harness, or better there is a claude agent sdk, both of which have clear auth and are permitted acc to anthropic. But to say that they want to use this auth as a substitution for API is a different issue altogether.