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Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

code.claude.com

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Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#711

Post by skeledrew »

mcherm wrote: post #684
canibal wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This move feels poorly timed. Their latest ad campaigns about not having ads, and the goodwill they'd earned lately in my book was just decimated by this. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's still just dipping their toes into the AI pool. And am very much a user that under utilizes what I pay for because of that. I have several clients who are scrambling to get on board with cowork. Eliminating API usage for subscrip…

> the goodwill they'd earned lately in my book was just decimated by this That sounds absurd to me. Committing to not building in advertising is very important and fundamental to me. Asking people who pay for a personal subscription rather than paying by the API call to use that subscription themselves sounds to me like it is. Just clarifying the social compact that was already implied. I WANT to be able to pay a sub…

The problem with fixed subscriptions in this model is that the service has an actual consumption cost. For something like internet service, the cost is primarily maintenance, unless the infrastructure is being expanded. But using LLMs is more like using water, where the more you use it, the greater the depletion of a resource (electricity in this case, which is likely being produced with fossil fuel which has to be sourced and transported, etc). Anthropic et al would be setting themselves up for a fall if they allow wholesale use at a fixed price.

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#712

Post by wrs »

rglullis wrote: post #691
nerdjon wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What law is actually being broken in Brazil? Are MMO’s illegal in Brazil? Is PlayStation Plus illegal in Brazil? Is Spotify, Apple Music, etc etc etc also illegal in Brazil? It would be ridiculous to argue that I could pay for a subscription to World of Warcraft and make my own third party client to play the game with. (Obviously you are free to argue it all you want but I would be very surprised if this was actually…

> What law is actually being broken in Brazil? "Tie-in sale": the business practice where a seller conditions the sale of one product (the tying good) on the buyer’s agreement to purchase a different product (the tied good). The examples you are giving are not "tie-in" sales because the service from Playstation Plus, Spotify, Apple Music, etc is the distribution of digital goods. > Unless I am mistaken Claude Code do…

Claude Pro = claude.ai, and they made no changes to that arrangement. Both claude.ai and Claude Pro are products built on top of the Claude API. You are free to buy access to the Claude API itself, with or without the other two, but the pricing is different because the price of claude.ai and Claude Code includes the API charges they incur.

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#713

Post by 2001zhaozhao »

There is a new breed of agent-agnostic tools that call the Claude Code CLI as if it's an API (I'm currently trying out vibe-kanban).

This could be used to adhere to Claude's TOS while still allowing the user to switch AI companies at a moment's notice.

Right now there's limited customizability in this approach, but I think it's not far-fetched to see FAR more integrated solutions in the future if the lock-in trend continues. For example: one MCP that you can configure into a coding agent like Claude Code that overrides its entire behavior (tools, skills, etc.) to a different unified open-source system. Think something similar to the existing IntelliJ IDEA's MCP that gives a separate file edit tool, etc. than the one the agent comes with.

Illustration of what i'm talking about:

- You install Claude Code with no configuration

- Then you install the meta-agent framework

- With one command the meta-agent MCP is installed in Claude Code, built-in tools are disabled via permissions override

- You access the meta-agent through a different UI (similar to vibe-kanban's web UI)

- Everything you do gets routed directly to Claude Code, using your Claude subscription legally. (Input-level features like commands get resolved by meta-agent UI before being sent to claude code)

- Claude Code must use the tools and skills directly from meta-agent MCP as instructed in the prompt, and because its own tools are permission denied (result: very good UI integration with the meta-agent UI)

- This would also work with any other CLI coding agent (Codex, Gemini CLI, Copilot CLI etc.) should they start getting ideas of locking users in

- If Claude Code rug-pulls subscription quotas, just switch to a competitor instantly

All it requires is a CLI coding agent with MCP support, and the TOS allowing automatic use of its UI (disallowing that would be massive hypocrisy as the AI companies themselves make computer use agents that allow automatic use of other apps' UI)

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#714

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

herzigma wrote: post #640
jamiemallers wrote: post #629

[dead]

More than just the real value: the real intelligence is in the harness.

I agree, but that's not something you can maintain an advantage on for long.

Perhaps there's enough overlap among the low hanging fruit that you can initially sell a harness that makes both genomics researchers and urban planners happy... but pretty quickly you're going to need to be the right kind of specialist to build an effective harness for it.

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#715

Post by stingrae »

nananana9 wrote: post #591
stingrae wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the path is by charging just a bit less than the salary of the engineers they are replacing.

After hearing this 10 times a day for the last 5 years I'm starting to get a bit tired. Do you have a rough time for when this great replacement is coming? 1 year? 2? 5? If it's longer than that can we shut up about it for a few years please.

It’s happening already? Ask any new CS grads about how good the job market is.

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#716

Post by skeledrew »

rglullis wrote: post #593
nerdjon wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I would not use it because it does not work the way I want it to work... But if that is the service they are making and they are clear about what it is when you sign up... That does not make it illegal. I can see why people think they should be entitled to do this, but it does not align with how they are selling the service or how many other companies sell services. In most situations you don't get unlimited acc…

> That does not make it illegal. "Both parties are okay with the terms" is far from being sufficient to make something "legal". Tie-in sales between software and services is not different from price dumping. If any of the Big Tech corporations were from any country that is not the US, the FTC would be doing anything in their power to stop them.

> Tie-in sales between software and services

Look at it this way: the service that you're accessing is really a (primarily desired) side-effect of the software. So re subscriptions, what they're actually providing are the apps (web, desktop, etc), and the apps use their service to aid the fulfillment of their functionality. Those wanting direct access to the internal service can get an API key for that purpose. That's just how their product offering is structured.

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#717

Post by marscopter »

bluelightning2k wrote: post #559

Reading these comments aren't we missing the obvious? Claude Code is a lock in, where Anthropic takes all the value. If the frontend and API are decoupled, they are one benchmark away from losing half their users. Some other motivations: they want to capture the value. Even if it's unprofitable they can expect it to become vastly profitable as inference cost drops, efficiency improves, competitors die out etc. Or wor…

> Reading these comments aren't we missing the obvious?

AI companies: "You think you own that code?"

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#718

Post by gandreani »

This is funny. This change actually pushes me into using a competitor more (https://www.kimi.com). I was trying out this provider with oh-my-pi (https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi) and was lamenting that it didn't have web search implemented using kimi.

Well a kind contributor just added that feature specifically because of this ban(https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi/pull/110).

I'm happy as a clam now. Yay for competition!

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#719

Post by skeledrew »

rglullis wrote: post #691
nerdjon wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What law is actually being broken in Brazil? Are MMO’s illegal in Brazil? Is PlayStation Plus illegal in Brazil? Is Spotify, Apple Music, etc etc etc also illegal in Brazil? It would be ridiculous to argue that I could pay for a subscription to World of Warcraft and make my own third party client to play the game with. (Obviously you are free to argue it all you want but I would be very surprised if this was actually…

> What law is actually being broken in Brazil? "Tie-in sale": the business practice where a seller conditions the sale of one product (the tying good) on the buyer’s agreement to purchase a different product (the tied good). The examples you are giving are not "tie-in" sales because the service from Playstation Plus, Spotify, Apple Music, etc is the distribution of digital goods. > Unless I am mistaken Claude Code do…

> All I care about is the access to the models through the client that I was already using!

But that's not a product that they're offering. That ability was an undesired (from their business perspective) trait that they're now rectifying.

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#720

Post by skeledrew »

duskdozer wrote: post #581
theturtletalks wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard they actually cache the full Claude Code system prompt on their servers and this saves them a lot of money. Maybe they cache the MCP tools you use and other things. If another harness like Opencode changes that prompt or adds significantly to it, that could increase costs for them. What I don't understand is why start this game of cat and mouse? Just look at Youtube and YT-DLP. YT-DLP, and the dozens of ap…

Some people drop out of the game as it gets harder. I've basically stopped looking at youtube videos unless I want it enough to download it (and wait if the current workarounds broke) with how much they've clamped down on no-account usage. Most I suspect just give in to the company's terms.

I just use NewPipe all the way.
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