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

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

#591

Post by raincole »

peterkelly wrote: post #523
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…

> Every single one of them oversells their capacity That sounds like their problem, not ours

It's not your problem anymore once you switch from Claude :)

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

#592

Post by g-mork »

Syntaf wrote: post #432
g-mork wrote: post #77

My answer to this is simply rolling back to the pro plan for interactive usage in the coming month, and forcefully cutting myself over to one of the alternative Chinese models to just get over the hump and normalise API pricing at a sensible rate with sensible semantics. Dealing with Claude going into stupid mode 15 times a day, constant HTTP errors, etc. just isn't really worth it for all it does. I can't see myself…

I put in probably thousands of Claude session hours a month, aggregated across work + personal. I must be missing something or supremely lucky because I feel like I’ve never hit these “stupid” moments. If I do, it’s probably because I forgot to switch off of haiku for some tiny side thing I was doing before going back to planning.

It's possible that it's simply paranoia, but moments where Opus starts acting like Haiku seem to correlate with periods of higher latency and HTTP errors. Don't like reporting this because it's so hand-wavy and conspiratorial, but it's difficult not to think they're internally using extraordinary measures of some sort to manage capacity.

But even when Opus is running healthy, it still doesn't address the underlying issue that these models can only do so much. I have had Opus build out a bunch of apps but I'm still finding my time absorbed as soon as it comes to anything genuinely exceeding "CRUD level difficulty". Ask it to fix a subtle visual alignment issue, make a small change to a completely novel algorithm, or just fix a tiny bug without having to watch for "Oh, this means I should rewrite module " is something that simply isn't possible while still being able to stand over the work.

It's not to say I don't get a massive benefit from these tools, I just think it's possible to be asking too much of them, and that's maybe the real problem to solve.

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

#593

Post by kzahel »

nc wrote: post #578
wild_egg wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing OpenClaw runs on pi? EDIT: confused by downvotes. In this thread people are saying it runs on top of `claude -p` and others saying it's on pi. The `claude -p` option is allowed per https://x.com/i/status/2040207998807908432 so I really don't understand how they're enforcing this.

It runs on pi, not claude -p

That's my understanding too, though i haven't checked it. running claude -p would be horribly inefficient. I would not be surprised if openclaw added some compatibility layer to brute force prompts through claude -p as a workaround. This isn't the first time that openclaw was "banned" from claude subscriptions.

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

#594

Post by Alifatisk »

Skimming through the comments, it feels like I am reading the same message over and over. I agree with some comments that are pointing out the issue with Anthropics capacity constraints and when Subscription vs Api is appropriate.

I would like to point out something else. I have Z.ai subscription and they have a dashboard on my usage.

When trying out Openclaw a while ago, I noted something worrying. Its constantly consuming tokens, every single hour during the day, it consumed tokens. I could see over a period of 30 days, token usage would climb and climb and climb and then shrink to bottom again, as if Openclaw did a context window compaction.

Note, this usage was happening even though I wasn’t using it. It were always running and doing something in the background.

I believe its their Heartbeat.md mechanism. By default it’s set to run every half an hour. I changed it to twice a day, that was enough to me.

I can imagine if thousands of users where connecting their Openclaw instance with default config to Claude with the latest and greatest Opus model, that must’ve felt a bit.

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

#595

Post by RIMR »

I didn't even realize you could connect a standard subscription to OpenClaw in the first place. It seems like you would run into limits rather quickly, which would degrade the experience quite badly.

Anthropic's current business model is to sell access to their tools to subscribers at a loss. Users maxing out their $200/month plan can realistically cost Anthropic $500-600 in actual compute costs.

Anthropic is okay with this right now because they want to amass as many users as they can, and eventually hope that GPUs will increase in power and efficiency, and their LLMs will become more efficient as well. They can eventually profit off of their current pricing, or with modest price increases, if that comes to fruition.

But letting OpenClaw wake up every 30 minutes and start sending requests is a surefire way to max out your weekly limits, and that certainly isn't something Anthropic planned for.

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

#597

Post by neal_jones »

Flere-Imsaho wrote: post #533
bethekind wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my next steps are: 1) try out openai $20/month. I've heard they're much more generous. 2) try out open router free models. I don't need geniuses, so long as I can see the thinking (something that Claude code obfuscates by default) I should be good. I've heard good things about the CLIO harness and want to try openrouter+clio

I'm taking a bet on local models to do the non genius work. Gemma 4 (released yesterday) has been designed to run on laptops / edge devices....and so far is running pretty well for me.

How’s Gemma 4 been?

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

#598

Post by RIMR »

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…

You are still misunderstanding.

If you max out your token limits, you are costing Anthropic more than you are paying them. They only expect a small percentage of their users to do this, but OpenClaw changed the dynamic.

Anthropic knows that they will lose more users by lowering limits than they will by blocking OpenClaw, because OpenClaw users will overwhelmingly switch to API pricing, while chatbot users will leave for competitors with higher limits.

They are a business. They hope to become profitable. This was the correct move.

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

#599

Post by [deleted] »

abustamam wrote: post #534
teekert wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and they will hide their sushi-grabbing because somewhere deep inside they know it's not part of the deal, while at the same time still strongly feeling that they have indeed paid for it. Ah, to be human!

I'd argue they hide their takeaway because of what GP comment said — not because of anything innate, but because a staff member will not let them. I grew up in an Asian household of six. We definitely took food home at AYCE places. My parents definitely knew it wasn't OK, but they felt like they were gaming the system (like a dubious life hack of sorts) and saving money, so they were actually quite proud of it, bragg…

[deleted]

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

#600

Post by lelanthran »

theshrike79 wrote: post #510
manmal wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not allow something like OpenClaw on our network And where’s the difference between the Claude Desktop app and OpenClaw at this point? Anthropic have been hard at work porting the most important features. You can easily shoot yourself in the foot with both now.

We have a legal contract with Anthropic OpenClaw and OpenCode are open source projects with zero warranty and nobody to sue if they have a npm Trojan in them

> OpenClaw and OpenCode are open source projects with zero warranty and nobody to sue if they have a npm Trojan in them

When has any technology company been sued for pushing accidental malware in their updates?

The reality is that you have never had anyone to sue.

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