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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

#761

Post by rglullis »

skeledrew wrote: post #758
rglullis wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why people should expect companies to provide things exactly the way they want at exactly the prices they would like to be charged This is a gross misrepresentation of my argument. I wouldn't be complaining at all if they went up and said "sorry, we are not going to subsidize anyone anymore, so the prices are going up", and I wouldn't be complaining if they came up and said "sorry, using a third…

It's not tie-in. They give users 2 choices: a) use their service via their public API, with the client(s) of their choice, at the regular price point; b) use the apps they provide, which use a private API, at a discounted price point. The apps are technically negative value for them from a purely upfront cost perspective as their use trigger these discounts and they're free by themselves. Good on you re that cancel.…

> They give users 2 choices: a) use their service via their public API, with the client(s) of their choice, at the regular price point; b) use the apps they provide, which use a private API, at a discounted price point.

There was a third choice, which was better than both of the ones presented: use any other client that can talk with our API, at whatever usage rate they deemed acceptable. If the "private API" was accessible via OAuth, then it's hardly "private".

We can argue all day, when I signed up there was nothing saying that access was exclusive via the tools they provided. They changed the rules not because it was costing them more (or even if does, they are losing money on Pro customers anyway so arguing about that is silly) but because they opened themselves for some valid and fair competition.

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

#762

Post by shykes »

hugmynutus wrote: post #180
shykes wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commodity hardware and software will continue to drop in price. Enterprise products with sufficient market share and "stickiness", will not. For historical precedent, see the commercial practices of Oracle, Microsoft, Vmware, Salesforce, at the height of their power.

> Commodity hardware and software will continue to drop in price. The software is free (citation: Cuda, nvcc, llvm, olama/llama cpp, linux, etc) The hardware is *not* getting cheaper (unless we're talking a 5+ year time) as most manufacturers are signaling the current shortages will continue ~24 months.

> The software is free (citation: Cuda, nvcc, llvm, olama/llama cpp, linux, etc)

If you factor in the cost of integration and ongoing maintenance - by humans or llms - it is not free. But it certainly has never been cheaper.

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

#763

Post by dakial1 »

bilekas wrote: post #314

It might be some confirmation bias here on my part but it feels as if companies are becoming more and more hostile to their API users. Recently Spotify basically nuked their API with zero urgency to fix it, redit has a whole convoluted npm package your obliged to use to create a bot, Facebook requires you to provide registered company and tax details even for development with some permissions. Am I just old man screa…

That is not new, just new with APIs.

The usual cycle with startups is to:

- Start being very open, as this brings people developing over the platforms and generates growth

- As long as they are growing, VC money will come to pay for everything. This is the scale up phase

- Then comes the VC exit, IPO or whatever

- Now the new owners don't want user growth, they want margin growth. This is the company phase

- Companies then have monetize their users (why not ads?), close up free, or high-maintenance stuff that do not bring margin

- and report that sweet $$$ growth quarter after quarter

...until a new startup comes in and starts the cycle over again, destroying all the value the old company had.

A mix of Enshittification and Innovators Dilemma theories

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

#764

Post by mikestorrent »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #576
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…

Anthropic is going to be on the losing side with this. Models are too fungible, it's really about vibes, and Claude Code is far too fat and opinionated. Ironically, they're holding back innovation, and it's burning the loyalty the model team is earning.

I think their branding is cementing in place for a lot of people, and the lived experience of people trying a lot of models often ends up with a simple preference for Claude, likely using a lot of the same mental heuristics as how we choose which coworkers we enjoy working with. If they can keep that position, they will have it made.

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

#765

Post by tracker1 »

mikestorrent wrote: post #764
CuriouslyC wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic is going to be on the losing side with this. Models are too fungible, it's really about vibes, and Claude Code is far too fat and opinionated. Ironically, they're holding back innovation, and it's burning the loyalty the model team is earning.

I think their branding is cementing in place for a lot of people, and the lived experience of people trying a lot of models often ends up with a simple preference for Claude, likely using a lot of the same mental heuristics as how we choose which coworkers we enjoy working with. If they can keep that position, they will have it made.

I'm a very experienced developer with a lot of diverse knowledge and experience in both technical and domain knowledge. I've only tried a handful of AI coding agents/models... I found most of them ranging from somewhat annoying to really annoying. Claude+Opus (4.5 when I started) is the first one I've used where I found it more useful than annoying to use.

I think Github Co-Pilot is most annoying from what I've tried... it's great for finishing off a task that's half done where the structure is laid out, as long as you put blinders keeping it focused on it. OpenAI and Google's options seem to get things mostly right, but do some really goofy wrong things from my own experiences.

They all seem to have trouble using state of the art and current libraries by default, even when you explicitly request them.

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

#766

Post by mikestorrent »

tracker1 wrote: post #765
mikestorrent wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think their branding is cementing in place for a lot of people, and the lived experience of people trying a lot of models often ends up with a simple preference for Claude, likely using a lot of the same mental heuristics as how we choose which coworkers we enjoy working with. If they can keep that position, they will have it made.

I'm a very experienced developer with a lot of diverse knowledge and experience in both technical and domain knowledge. I've only tried a handful of AI coding agents/models... I found most of them ranging from somewhat annoying to really annoying. Claude+Opus (4.5 when I started) is the first one I've used where I found it more useful than annoying to use. I think Github Co-Pilot is most annoying from what I've tried…

Well, let's be thankful that there's still some work to do so we can keep our jobs for a few more years!

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

#767

Post by skeledrew »

rglullis wrote: post #761
skeledrew wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not tie-in. They give users 2 choices: a) use their service via their public API, with the client(s) of their choice, at the regular price point; b) use the apps they provide, which use a private API, at a discounted price point. The apps are technically negative value for them from a purely upfront cost perspective as their use trigger these discounts and they're free by themselves. Good on you re that cancel.…

> They give users 2 choices: a) use their service via their public API, with the client(s) of their choice, at the regular price point; b) use the apps they provide, which use a private API, at a discounted price point. There was a third choice, which was better than both of the ones presented: use any other client that can talk with our API, at whatever usage rate they deemed acceptable. If the "private API" was acc…

There was no third choice if they didn't explicitly state that there was.

> If the "private API" was accessible via OAuth, then it's hardly "private".

If you invite people on your porch for a party, and someone finds that you left the house key under the mat and went off to restock, then it's hardly "private". It's perfectly fine for whomever feels like to take the party indoors without your permission. Pretty much what you're saying, reframed, but I seriously doubt you'd agree to random people entering parts of yours premises to which you didn't explicitly invite them.

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

#768

Post by caspar »

baby wrote: post #543
skerit wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which other CLI agents are that? Because I've found OpenCode to be A LOT better than Claude-Code.

Whats better with opencode? Never tried it. I like that claude code has double escape, shift + tab, team of agents

I haven't used opencode but pi agent runs rings around claude code. Never eats tons of CPU on big outputs, no flickering, open source, tree-based context instead of claude's linear context, easy to toggle collapsing/expanding tool outputs, built for extension with runtime reloading of extensions and skills, etc. You can easily build your own amp-code like handoff mechanism, customize the UI (i see models' edit diffs syntax-highlighted with delta, and just added a keybind to list session-edited files + files from git status in fzf), etc.

Meanwhile with Claude Code I've had to get claude to decompile the editor (extract JS from the bun executable) _twice_ to diagnose weird things like why some documented config flags were not taking effect.

Opus is great - but I'd rather use a different model than be forced back into Claude Code.

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

#769

Post by notpushkin »

skeledrew wrote: post #759
ethbr1 wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because open source has always been completely independent of unrelated corporate entities who employ people to work on it?

Because anyone can actually check the code, which means if there's any funny business, someone will come across it eventually and blow it open.

There probably wouldn’t be anything funny-looking – it might look like a genuine mistake in implementation that burns 2× or 3× tokens somehow (which, considering OpenClaw is vibe coded in the purest sense of this term, would blend right in).

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

#770

Post by weird-eye-issue »

barrenko wrote: post #315
nostromo wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll all do this eventually. We're in the part of the market cycle where everyone fights for marketshare by selling dollar bills for 50 cents. When a winner emerges they'll pull the rug out from under you and try to wall off their garden. Anthropic just forgot that we're still in the "functioning market competition" phase of AI and not yet in the "unstoppable monopoly" phase.

"Naveen Rao, the Gen AI VP of Databricks, phrased it quite well: all closed AI model providers will stop selling APIs in the next 2-3 years. Only open models will be available via APIs (…) Closed model providers are trying to build non-commodity capabilities and they need great UIs to deliver those. It's not just a model anymore, but an app with a UI for a purpose." ~ https://vintagedata.org/blog/posts/model-is-the-p…

Not going to happen.
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