Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#311

Post by Aperocky » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:26 AM UTC

nfw2 wrote: post #223

I don't understand exactly what is being banned. I have a vibe coded context manager + chat thread UI that I use to manage multiple claude code cli sessions simultaneous. Is this allowed? If not how would this get identified vs other cli usage? How is this different than openclaw?

openclaw is too easy to set up and way too messy and context heavy, they don't have to catch you they just have to catch the guy on the market giving out free modified V8 F150s while Anthropic are selling gas subscriptions in town.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#312

Post by xvector » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:27 AM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #52

firloop wrote: post #47

This is slightly different from what OpenCode was banned from doing; they were a separate harness grabbing a user’s Claude Code session and pretending to be Claude Code. OpenClaw was still using Claude Code as the harness (via claude -p)[0]. I understand why Anthropic is doing this (and they’ve made it clear that building products around claude -p is disallowed) but I fear Conductor will be next. [0]: See “Option B:…

Ah thank you, this is very helpful distinction to know. When they shut down open code, I thought it was a lame move and was critical of them, but I could understand at least where they're coming from. With this though, it's ridiculous. Claude core tools are still being used in this case. Shelling out to it to use it there's no different than a normal user would do themselves. If this continues, I'll be taking my $200…

No a normal user is not shelling out to Claude Code 24/7, but OpenClaw certainly is.

OpenAI will soon do the same thing, don't be delusional.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#313

Post by mech422 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:28 AM UTC

goosejuice wrote: post #160

jesse_dot_id wrote: post #73

There seem to be a ton of people who don't understand how subscription services work. Every single one of them oversells their capacity. The power users that use the services a lot are subsidized by those who don't use it as much, which tends to be the vast majority of the user base. OpenClaw is an autonomous power user. The growing adoption of this walking attack surface was either going to A) cause the cost of Clau…

What you're saying is conceptually true for subscription services in general, but thats not why they are making this change. There's a 5 hour limit and a weekly limit. Those are hard token limits. Everyone on a plan pays for the max set of tokens in that plan. The limits manage capacity. The solution to that isn't a change of ToS, it's adjusting the limits. In other words this is about Anthropic subsidizing their own…

This is what I've been wondering about for a while now. I have the 20x plan as well, which I thought would allow me to try some API coding - but you get zero API usage.

As you said, I would imagine where the token usage comes from is irrelevant - you are generating the same load whether you do it from claude code or some other agent. So it seems like the rules are more to do with encouraging claude code usage, rather then claude model usage.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#314

Post by fluoridation » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:28 AM UTC

dimmke wrote: post #296

harrall wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how free drink refills, airplane tickets, Internet service, unlimited data plans, insurance, flat rate shipping, monthly transit passes, Netflix, Apple Music, gym memberships, museum memberships, car wash plans, amusement park passes, all you can eat buffets, news subscriptions, and many more work. Either you get a flat rate fee based on certain allowed usage patterns or everyone has to be billed à la carte.

This is a different case - those all have limitations based on human behavior (it's not necessary or possible to constantly be washing your car the entire month when you pay for unlimited washes) - that doesn't exist here. The types of plans available should reflect that reality. If gyms faced a situation where people would go and spend 18 hours working out every day for a month, they would probably change how they b…

>If gyms faced a situation where people would go and spend 18 hours working out every day for a month, they would probably change how they billed things.

Not the best example. The upkeep cost of a gym is pretty flat regardless of how much people use the facilities. Two people can't use a single machine at the same time make it wear out twice as fast. The price of memberships is not correlated to usage, it's inversely correlated to the number of memberships sold.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#315

Post by bob1029 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:28 AM UTC

$200 is a lot of money per month. I just bought this much in OAI API credits and I expect them to last me until August or so.

If you started plugging tools into GPT5.4 you may soon discover that you don't need anything beyond a single conversation loop with some light nesting. A lot of the openclaw approach seems to be about error handling, retry, resilience and perspectives on LLM tool use from 4+ months ago. All of these ideas are nice, but it's a hell of a lot easier to just be right the first time if all you need is a source file updated or an email written. You can get done in 100 tokens what others can't seem to get done in millions of tokens. As we become more efficient, the economic urgency around token smuggling begins to dissipate.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#316

Post by Aperocky » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:30 AM UTC

Multiplayer wrote: post #44

Big Giant Million Dollar Question: Where does having Openclaw using Claude Code via ACP fall? It's using the Claude Code harness, not the model directly. If you are not aware, ACP creates a persistent session for steering rather than using the models directly.

I have no idea what ACP offers that are superior to a tmux session. With tmux, you can attach to it at any time, send keys at any time, and capture pane without bothering any running process inside.

And you don't have to get anyone's permission to use tmux.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#317

Post by NewsaHackO » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:30 AM UTC

mccoyb wrote: post #278

colechristensen wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At no point in the last 10,000 years of human civilization has there not been a developing technology that threatened to forever reshape and displace a class of labor. Or are you also upset about the modern plight of the telephone operator, farrier, or coal miner?

I see -- and AI is just like all technologies that came before it ... It is not a class of labor ... it is all digital labor. Do you or do you not understand this? It is digital knowledge itself, and then all communication labor, and then all physical labor with robotics. Is this clear to you?

Are SWE's the only digital labor job?

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#318

Post by satvikpendem » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:30 AM UTC

dimmke wrote: post #310

coldtea wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sell metered usage while having the implied expectation that most wont use it fully. Power users and users of stuff like OpenClaw don't match that idea. So they further restricted the metered caps, which were only offered to NOT be reached by that many. Simple as that.

>Power users and users of stuff like OpenClaw don't match that idea. Then they should figure out how to structure an offering that accommodates this type of usage not just blanket ban it

Why "should" they? There's no reason they would especially when their competitor now owns OpenClaw.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#319

Post by satvikpendem » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:31 AM UTC

boppo1 wrote: post #297

dimmke wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Anthropic is going down a bad path here with billing things this way. Especially as local LLM continues to develop so fast. I downgraded from my $200 a month plan to my $20 plan and hit limits constantly. I try to use the API access I purchased separately, and it doesn't work with Claude Code (something about the 1 million context requiring extra usage) so I have to use it Continue. Then I get instantly r…

>Especially as local LLM continues to develop so fast. I'm sorry is there anything even close to sonnet, much less opus, that can be run on a 4080? Or 64gb of ram, even slowly?

Qwen 3.5, Gemma 4

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#320

Post by mech422 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:31 AM UTC

jmalicki wrote: post #190

goosejuice wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is conceptually true for subscription services in general, but thats not why they are making this change. There's a 5 hour limit and a weekly limit. Those are hard token limits. Everyone on a plan pays for the max set of tokens in that plan. The limits manage capacity. The solution to that isn't a change of ToS, it's adjusting the limits. In other words this is about Anthropic subsidizing their own…

You aren't paying to be using that limit all of the time. You are paying to be using that limit some of the time. There are 5 hour windows when you are sleeping and can't use it. There are weekend limits. Theoretically you can max out every 5 hour window, but they lose money on that. It's structured so users can have bursts of unlimited usage, and spend ~15% of the theoretical max cap, and that's still cheaper than a…

you can write automated MCP tools that run within claude code, and could theoretically generate as high a load as any other automated/3rd party agent. You can also do loops that burn tokens incredibly fast. This is allowed with no caveats (I use MCP's basically to test what I'd like to try with the API...) So this explanation just seems a lil hollow.