You're not "rolling your own client." You're using a subscription that prices in a specific usage pattern, the one mediated by their client, and trying to route around it to extract more value than you're paying for. That's not hacking, it's arbitrage, and pretending it's about editor philosophy is cope.

Anthropic sells two products: a consumer subscription with a UI, and an API with metered pricing. You want the API product at the subscription price. That's not a principled stance about interface freedom, it's just wanting something for less than it costs.

The nvim analogy doesn't land either. Nobody's stopping you from writing your own client. You just have to pay API rates for it, because that's the product that matches what you're describing. The subscription subsidises the cost per token by constraining how you use it. Remove the constraint, the economics break. This isn't complicated.

"I don't give a shit about Anthropic's credit liability," right, but they do, because it's their business. You're not entitled to a flat-rate all-you-can-eat API just because you find metered pricing aesthetically displeasing.