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Anthropic made a mistake in cutting off third-party clients

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Re: Anthropic made a mistake in cutting off third-party clients

#91

Post by conartist6 »

jrsj wrote: post #50
Philpax wrote: post #13

I'll be honest; I'm pretty sure this "mistake" will be completely forgotten by the next month. Their enforcing that their subscription only works with their product should not really come as a surprise to anyone, and the alt-agent users are a small enough minority that they'll get over it.

I’m starting to think you’re right but only because software engineers don’t seem to actually value or care about open source anymore. Apparently we have collectively forgotten how bad it can be to let your tools own you instead of the other way around. Maybe another symptom of Silicon Valley hustle culture — nobody cares about the long term consequences if you can make a quick buck.

We're going to learn that lesson again in a big hurry at this point.

Re: Anthropic made a mistake in cutting off third-party clients

#92

Post by verdverm »

I want to like Anthropic, they have such a great knowledge sharing culture and their content is bar none, but then they keep pulling stuff like this... I just can't bring myself to trust their leadership's values or ethics.

that and they "stole" my money

Re: Anthropic made a mistake in cutting off third-party clients

#93

Post by buppermint »

verdverm wrote: post #92

I want to like Anthropic, they have such a great knowledge sharing culture and their content is bar none, but then they keep pulling stuff like this... I just can't bring myself to trust their leadership's values or ethics. that and they "stole" my money

I would disagree on the knowledge sharing. They're the only major AI company that's released zero open weight models. Nor do they share any research regarding safety training, even though that's supposedly the whole reason for their existence.

Re: Anthropic made a mistake in cutting off third-party clients

#94

Post by dionian »

vorpalhex wrote: post #66
fathermarz wrote: post #44

After reading this opinion ten times today. Can someone explain to me why OpenCode is a “better harness”? Or is it just because it’s open source that people support it?

OpenCode has some more advanced features and plays nicely in more advanced setups. ClaudeCode isn't bad at all, but OpenCode has some tricks up it's sleeve.

e.g. ?

Re: Anthropic made a mistake in cutting off third-party clients

#95

Post by 4b11b4 »

Anthropic has been doing this from the start and they are justified in it (the plan has different pricing rates than API). People have been making workarounds and they are justified in that as well - those people understand their workarounds are fragile when they made them.

Re: Anthropic made a mistake in cutting off third-party clients

#96

Post by zitterbewegung »

ojosilva wrote: post #28

They did not. Anthropic is protecting its huge asset: the Claude Code value chain, which has proven itself to be a winner among devs (me included, after trying everything under the sun in 2025). If anything, Anthropic's mistake is that they are incapable of monetizing their great models in the chat market, where ChatGPT reigns: ie. Anthropic did not invest in image generation, Google did and Gemini has a shot at the…

I rather have a product that is only good at one single thing than mid for everything else especially when the developer experience for me is much more consistent than using gemini and chatgpt to the point that I only have chatgpt for productivity reasons and also sometimes making better prompts to claude (when I don't use claude to make a better prompt). After realizing that Anthropic is discounting token usages for claude code they should have made that more explicit and also the API key (but hindsight is 20/20) they should already have been blocking third party apps or just have you make another API key that has no discount but even then this could have pissed off developers.

Re: Anthropic made a mistake in cutting off third-party clients

#97

Post by motoxpro »

jrsj wrote: post #69
Philpax wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing stopping you from using OpenCode with any other provider, including Anthropic: you just can't get the subsidised pricing while doing so. This is irritating, yes - it certainly disincentivises me from trying out OpenCode - but it's also, like, not unexpected? In any case, the long-term solution for true openness is to be able to run open-weight models locally or through third-party inference providers.

Yes but why are they subsidizing the pricing and requiring to use their closed source client to benefit from it? It’s the same reason the witch in the story of Hansel and Gretel was giving out free candy.

Is this a serious question? Why would they subsidize people when there is no benifet to them? Subsidization means they are LOSING money when people use it. If the customers that are using 3rd party clients are unwilling to pay a price that is profitable for them, that is a very positive, not negative, thing for Anthropic to lose them.

The reason to subsidize is the exact reason you are worried about. Lock in, network effects, economies of scale, etc.

Re: Anthropic made a mistake in cutting off third-party clients

#98

Post by bloppe »

pizlonator wrote: post #90

It seems that Anthropic's thesis is that vertical integration wins. It's too soon to tell if that's true or not. One of the features of vertical integration is that there will be folks complaining about it. Like the way folks would complain that it's impossible or hard to install macOS on anything other than a Mac, and impossible or hard to install anything other than macOS on a Mac. Yet, despite those complains, the…

I, personally, will churn once my CC pro subscription is up. They're harshing my vibe.

They're probably losing money on each pro subscription so they probably won't miss me!

Re: Anthropic made a mistake in cutting off third-party clients

#99

Post by shawnz »

F7F7F7 wrote: post #55
Palmik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure most people get Anthropic's move. I also think "getting it" is perfectly compatible with being unhappy about it and voicing that opinion online.

OP is responding to an article that largely frames Anthropic as clueless.

I don't think it is intending to frame the move as clueless, but rather short-sighted. It could very well be a good move for them in the short term.
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