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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

#801

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…

I run a small third-party harness myself (not OpenClaw, something much smaller). Checked my API key today after this announcement - turns out I was already on a regular API key so it doesnt affect me directly.

But the interesting thing is, my actual token usage running agents is way less than people here seem to assume. Most of the time the agent is waiting for tools, reading files, thinking. The bursts are intense but short. I probably use less tokens per hour than someone doing a long manual coding session with lots of back and forth.

The real issue for me isnt cost, its that they can just change the rules whenever. I had to drop everything today to verify my setup still works. Thats the tax of building on someone elses platform I guess.

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

#802

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…

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

#803

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…

"subsidised" is in wrong context. They charge how much they thought it would make sense then people found a way of maximizing the usage under the rules and now they change the rules. I am sure they will put out a product which is exactly OpenClaw/openclaw-like with Claude code soon, and my guess goes even to say that's the reason why they went after the naming... They totally wanted to steal the idea from the moment they saw. As they, and all other ai companies always do. They just steal and contribute nothing back.

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

#804

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…

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They do not advertise a capacity constraint. There is definitely one there, because it's the only way they can offer a reasonable price. Why do you think streaming services suddenly get plagued with technical issues when they host a live event? They are so chronically under-provisioned that they can only guess at the actual amount of compute they need to serve even a fraction of their subscriber base suddenly deciding to watch something at the same time. And their best guess is usually wrong, because even then — even when they know they need to deliver on a live event — they STILL under-provision their compute, or constrain their autoscaling thresholds, in an effort to save money.

Is your unlimited 5G plan actually unlimited, or does your download rate drop to dialup speeds after your crest a certain amount of bandwidth usage?

Have you ever had an ISP in a populated area? What's the reliability like? Is it worse during certain times of the day?

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

#805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't imaging a point where I won't want to ask "what's the weather like?" "please turn off the lights" To help with understanding that perspective, I cannot imagine a scenario where I would ask a device connected to the internet to turn off the lights. I literally never wanted this. A physical switch is a 100% non negotiable for me. I feel the same way about non-mechanical car doors. Perhaps due to that outlook…

Have you never... asked a person a question? to do something for you? to pass the salt? what time it was? Maybe you're a little strange but it cannot be that much of a stretch for you to consider using speech to ask for things. Not wanting to hide things behind Internet connected computers is fine, being unable to imagine wanting to use your voice to ask for things is a little silly.

Not OP but for me it comes down to "asking a person" ≠ "asking a device". Besides just to be pedantic one of the thing you've described is not something an llm would be able to do, and for the second one... That's what watches and clocks are for. You don't need to have a datacenter running smwh in the world or a beefy PC to take a glance at the time. If you think you do, I personally wouldn't call others "a little strange" if I were you.

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

#806

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…

If you maximise the usage of your quota you are not doing anything wrong. They just tricked people I to thinking they quota was higher than it was really was and when people found a way of maximizing that, they had to cut it.

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

#807

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…

It is not a justification, but, it is not like Anthropic didn't pirate tons of books and burnt evidence... The only difference is that books don't have a terms of service

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

#808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Eastern Bloc states, it used to be so common for workers to steal from the workplace that new moral norms were established around this; if you're not stealing from work, you're stealing from your own family! Goes to show just how fragile a high-trust society is. Theft and corruption can easily be normalized to such an extent that not participanting gets reframed as immoral.

The slogan of the Russian Revolution of 1917 was: "Factories to the workers, land to the peasants." If the factory is yours, then everything inside is yours ;) But it's funny how low wages under the broken Soviet economic system turned such things into a semi-official, informal work perks, allowing people to make ends meet.

This is not false but totally an oversimplification.

I don't think communism is a good form of government and I don't think the soviet union was marching the right way.

But the biggest blunts came from other much more serious mistakes caused by politicians ignoring science, like the big famine and many others, including the Chernobyl connerie

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

#809
post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys are arguing on the reality of a subscription, but Anthropic still resides in the coocoo make-up world of growth at all costs backed up by unfathomable investments. They're not acting rationally by trying to present a good product with reasonable backend fundamentals. They're just trying to maintain the money loss to what they have set aside for the quarter. OpenClaw was not planned for, and thus must be foug…

Anthropic isn't "fighting" OpenClaw. They just want OpenClaw users to switch to API pricing so that their service doesn't become a blackhole for investor money. Operating at a loss can be strategic, but they had to carefully consider the ratio of casual users to power users to keep that loss steady and sustainable. Power users always cost these services more than they pay, and OpenClaw turns every user into a power u…

Anthropic wants power users, that's specifically their game, they just don't want those users using a harness they don't control.
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