Feature delivery rate by Anthropic is basically a fast takeoff in miniature. Pushing out multiple features each week that used to take enterprises quarters to deliver.
The bell curve up and then back down has been so jarring that I am pivoting to fully diversifying my use of all models to ensure that no one org has me by the horns.
(Amazon + Anthropic does seem like a much more compelling enterprise collaboration / acquisition than Microsoft + OpenAI ever did.)
I like to just check the release notes from time to time:
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/releases
and the equally frenetic openclaw:
https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/releases
GPT-4.1 was released a year ago today. Sonnet 4 is ~11 months old. The claude-code cli was released last Feb. Gas Town is 3 months old.
This is a chart that simply counts the bullet points in the release notes of claude code since inception:
This is as bad and as slow as it's going to be.
They support much of the same triggers and come with many additional security controls out of the box
Your own, personal, Jevons.
Luckily you can turn if off pretty easily, but I don't know why it's on by default to begin with. I guess holdover from when people used it with a $20 subscription and didn't care.
The reason someone would use this vs. third-party alternatives is still the fact that the $200/mo subscription is markedly cheaper than per-token API billing.
Not sure how this works out in the long term when switching costs are virtually zero.
All these not really helpful, but vendor specific, "bonuses" sounds like a way to try to lock people in, to try to raise the switching cost.
I'm using, on purpose, a simple process so that at any time I can switch AI provider.
...Except now you sorta-kinda can: now they auto-detect 3rd party stuff and bill you per-token for it?
If I'm reading it right:
You can still use OpenClaw on their API pricing tier as much as you want. What they did is not allow subscriptions to be used to power automated third-party workloads, including OpenClaw.
Now, is their messaging around this confusing? Absolutely. The whole thing has been handled shambolically. Everyone knows that they lack the compute to keep up, and likely have lower margins on subscriptions than API; but they cannot just say that because investors may be skittish.
This Routines feature notably works with the subscription, and it also has API callbacks. So if my Telegram bot calls that API... do I get my Anthropic account nuked or not?
edit: And specifically i'm making an IDE, and trying to get ClaudeCode into it. I frankly have no clue when Claude usage is simply part of an IDE and "okay" and when it becomes a third party harness..
> My point is that they must apply these restrictions.
I fully understand and respect they need restrictions on how you can use your subscription (or any of their offerings). My issue is not there there _are_ restrictions but that the restrictions themselves are unclear which leads to people being unsure where the line is (that they are trying not to cross).
Put simply: At what point is `claude -p` usage not allowed on a subscription:
- Running `claude -p` from the CLI?
- Running `claude -p` on a Cron?
- Running `claude -p` as a response to some external event? (GH action, webhook, etc?)
- Running `claude -p` when I receive a Telegram/Discord/etc message (from myself)?
Different people will draw the line in different places and Anthropic is not forthcoming about what is or is not allowed. Essentially, there is a spectrum between "Running claude by hand on the command line" and "OpenClaw" [0] and we don't know where they draw the line. Because of that, and because the banning process is draconian and final with no appeals, it leads to a lot of frustration.
[0] I do not use OpenClaw nor am I arguing it should be allowed on the subscription. It would be nice if it was but I'm not saying it should be. I'm just saying that OpenClaw clearly is _not_ allowed but `claude -p` wouldn't be usable at all with a subscription if it was completely banned so what can it (safely) be used for?
It would be absurd to me if the same application is somehow allowed via ACP but not via official SDK. Though perhaps the official SDK offers data/features that they don't want you to use for certain scenarios? If that were they case though it would be nice if they actually published a per-SDK-API restrictions list.
That we're having to guess at this feels painful.
edit: Hah, hilariously you're still using the SDK even if you use ACP, since Claude doesn't have ACP support i believe? https://github.com/agentclientprotocol/claude-agent-acp
It says in the prohibited use section:
> Except when you are accessing our Services via an Anthropic API Key or where we otherwise explicitly permit it, to access the Services through automated or non-human means, whether through a bot, script, or otherwise.
So it seems like using a harness or your own tools to call claude -p is fine, AS LONG AS A HUMAN TRIGGERS IT. They don’t want you using the subscription to automate things calling claude -p… unless you do it through their automation tools I guess? But what if you use their automation tool to call your harness that calls claude -p? I don’t actually know. Does it matter if your tool loops to call claude -p? Or if your automation just makes repeated calls to a routine that uses your harness to make one claude -p call?
It is not nearly as clear as I thought 10 minutes ago.
Edit: Well, I was just checking my usage page and noticed the new 'Daily included routine runs' section, where it says you get 15 free routine runs with your subscription (at least with my max one), and then it switches to extra usage after that. So I guess that answers some of the questions... by using their routine functionality they are able to limit your automation potential (at least somewhat) in terms of maxing out your subscription usage.
The Chilling Effect of this is real and it gets more and more frustrating that they can't or won't clarify.
I downgraded my $200/mo sub to $20 this past week and I’m going to try out Codex’s Pro plans. Between the cache TTL (does it even affect me? No idea), changes in the rate limit, 429 rate limit HTTP status code during business hours, adaptive thinking (literally the worst decision they’ve ever made, as far as my line of work is concerned), dumb agent behavior silently creating batshit insane fallthroughs, clearly vibe coded harness/infrastructure, and their total lack of transparency, I think I’m done. It was fun while it lasted but I’m tired of paying for their mistakes in capacity planning and I feel like the big rug pull (from all three SOTA providers) is coming like a freight train.
I didn't even know what opencode was prior to that drama, yet now here i am using opencode and a ton of crafted openai agents in my projects. Would love to have some claude agents in that mix, but i guess im stuck in Claude Code if i wanna even touch their models... I'd love to go back to just claude as i "trust" them more in a sorta less evil vibe manner, but if they are gonna prevent subscription usage to something people use to allow themselves more freedom, they gotta then close that gap with their own tools rather than pumping out stuff like this which scares me off given the past couple months.
I totally understand why they are cutting off 3pa access to stuff like openclaw, where the avg user is just a power user in comparison to avg claude user or whatever. I haven't kept up a ton with their opencode issues, but I just know i can't get behind a company actively trying to make my potential usage of tokens less optimized to keep me locked into their ecosystem.
Really just kinda hoping local models kill it all for devs after a few years, I'm not interested in perma relying on data centers for my workflow.
Another comparison would be "unlimited storage", where "unlimited" means some people will abuse it and the company will soon limit the "unlimited."
- SDK that allows you to use OAuth authentication!
- Docs updated to say DO NOT USE OAUTH authentication unless authorized! [0]
- Anthropic employee Tweeting "That's not what we meant! It's fine for personal use!" [1]
- An email sent out to everyone saying it's NOT fine do NOT use it [2]
Sigh.
[0] https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview#get-start... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1r8et0d/update_fr... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47633396
We ought to come up with a term for this new discipline, eg "software engineering" or "programming"
airgramming plusgramming programming maxgramming studiogramming
and recently the brand new way of working: Neogramming !
Personally I stick for now with the "Programming " tier. Maybe will upgrade to "Maxgramming" later this year...
Sorry, but I just have to ask. Why is u/minimaxir's comment dead? Is this somehow an error, an attack, or what?
This is a respected user, with a sane question, no?
I vouched, but not enough.
edit: His comment has arisen now. Leaving this up for reference.
Oh uh... ok then.
It was a bit buggy, but it seems to work better now. Some use cases that worked for me:
1. Go over a slack channel used for feedback for an internal tool, triage, open issues, fix obvious ones, reply with the PR link. Some devs liked it, some freaked out. I kept it.
2. Surprisingly non code related - give me a daily rundown (GitHub activity, slack messages, emails) - tried it with non Claude Code scheduled tasks (CoWork) not as good, as it seems the GitHub connector only works in Claude Code. Really good correlation between threads that start on slack, related to email (outlook), or even my personal gmail.
I can share the markdowns if anyone is interested, but it's pretty basic.
Very useful, (when it works).
- No trust that they won't nerf the tool/model behind the feature
- No trust they won't sunset the feature (the graveyard of LLM-features is vast and growing quickly while they throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks)
- No trust in the company long-term. Both in them being around at all and them not rug-pulling. I don't want to build on their "platform". I'll use their harness and their models but I don't want more lock-in than that.
If Anthropic goes "bad" I want to pick up and move to another harness and/or model with minimal fuss. Buying in to things like this would make that much harder.
I'm not going to build my business or my development flows on things I can't replicate myself. Also, I imagine debugging any of this would be maddening. The value add is just not there IMHO.
EDIT: Put another way, LLM companies are trying to climb the ladder to be a platform, I have zero interest in that, I was a "dumb pipe", I want a commodity, I want a provider, not a platform. Claude Code is as far into the dragon's lair that I want to venture and I'm only okay with that because I know I can jump to OpenCode/Codex/etc if/when Anthropic "goes bad".
I actually trust that they will.
1) that AI will be more advanced in the future
2) that the AI I am using will be worse in the future
* make sure the model maxes out all benchmarks
* release it
* after some time, nerf it
* repeat the same with the next model
However, the net sum is positive: in general, models from 2026 are better than those from 2024.
Yes, I expect that is very much the point here. A bunch of product guys got on a whiteboard and said, okay the thing is in wide use but the main moat is that our competitors are even more distrusted in the market than we are; other than that it's completely undifferentiated and can be swapped out in a heartbeat for multiple other offerings. How do we do we persuade our investors we have a locked in customer base that won't just up-stakes in favour of other options or just running open source models themselves?
The report that they are 90% Ai code generated seems more likely the more I attempt to use their products.
I bet anthropic wants to be there already but doesn't have the compute to support it yet.
I'd say that counts as yes.
(For clarity: neither are powered by Claude Code Routines. Rather, Claude Code coded them and they're simple cron jobs themselves.)
Am I needed anymore?
This PR was created by the Claude Code Routine:
https://github.com/srid/claude-dump/pull/5
The original prompt: https://i.imgur.com/mWmkw5e.png
And because they use AI heavily, they produce new product every week. So fast, that I have no time to check, does it worth or not.
This one looks interesting. I have some custom commands that I execute manually weekly, for monitoring, audits, summary, reports. It it can send reports on email, or generate something that I can read in the morning with my coffee, or after I finish with it ;) it might be a good tool.
The question is, do I really want to so much productive? I am already much better in performance with AI, compared with the 'old school' way...
Everything is just getting to much for me.
Oh cool! vendor lock-in.
The new reality of coding took away one of the best things for me - that the computer always just does what it is told to do. If the results are wrong it means I'm wrong, I made a bug and I can debug it. Here.. I'm not a hater, it's a powerful tool, but.. it's different.
... until this week! Opus is struggling worse than Sonnet those last two weeks.
I think to become really efficient they'll have to invent new programming language to eliminate all the ambiguity and non-determinism. Call it "prompt language", with ai-subroutines, ai-labels and ai-goto.
minimaxir•2h ago
EDIT: This comment is apparently [dead] and idk why.
breakingcups•1h ago
minimaxir•1h ago
TacticalCoder•1h ago
giancarlostoro•1h ago
I think the real issue stems from the 1 Million token context window change. They did not anticipate the amount of load it would give you. That first few days after they released the new token window, I was making amazing things in one single session from nothing, to something (a new .NET based programming language inspired by Python, and a Virtual Actor framework in Rust). I think since then they've been trying too many things to tweak things, whilst irritating their users.
They even added a new "Max" thinking mode, and made "High" the old medium, which is ridiculous because you think you're using "High" but really you're not. There's a hidden config file to change their terrible defaults to let Claude be smarter still, and apparently you can toggle off the 1M tokens.
I think the real fix, and I'm surprised nobody there has done this yet, is to let the user trim down their context window.
Think about it, you used to have what? 350k tokens or so? Now Claude will keep sending your prompt from 30 minutes ago that's completely irrelevant to the back-end, whereas 3 months ago it would have been compacted by now.
Others have noted that similar prompting for some ungodly reason adds tens of thousands of extra garbage tokens (not sure why).
Edit looks like someone figured out that if you downgrade your version of Claude Code and change one single setting it unruins Claude:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47769879
dacox•1h ago
giancarlostoro•19m ago
I'm thinking they should go back to all their old settings and as a user cap you at their old token limit, and ask you if you want to compact at your "soft" limit or burst for a little longer, to finish a task.
imhoguy•37m ago