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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

> (claude -p still works on the sub but I get the feeling like if I actually use it, I'll get my Anthropic acct. nuked. Would be great to get some clarity on this. If I invoke it from my Telegram bot, is that an unauthorized 3rd party harness?)

100% this, I’ve posted the same sentiment here on HN. I hate the chilling effect of the bans and the lack of clarity on what is and is not allowed.

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In this case, they handled things pretty well. You can still use openclaw etc with your regular Anthropic subscription, it will just count towards your extra credits / usage which you can buy for a 30% discount compared to API pricing. And they gave everyone one month’s value in credits.

I don’t think they could have done that much better I’d say.

That does not address joshstrange's concerns.

There is very poor clarity about what is and isn't allowed with the Claude SDK/claude -p. Are we allowed to use it to automate stuff? What kind of tasks is it permitted to be used for? What if you call your script 'OrangeClaw' and release that on GitHub? What if your script gets super popular, does it suddenly become against TOS?

This is exactly my point. At what point does it become a ToS violation? Right now it's a huge grey area and the idea of getting my account banned because I crossed an invisible line with zero recourse other than to switch providers is... frustrating.

It's pretty easy to read between the lines tbh. Personal, non-automated use is fine. Using it as a means to automate depleting your 5-hour limit 24/7 ("leftover usage") is not fine. They don't want to put in in the ToS because it's almost impossible because writing what I just said will still have people going "well what's automated, where's the exact line!" when it's all pretty clear what the intended use case here is. The Anthropic peeps have said about as much.

I get that the traditional dev is allergic to the concept of reading between the lines and demands everything to be spelled out explicitly, but maybe you should just see it as something to learn because it's an incredibly useful life skill.

Ok, let's say I'm not using it to deplete leftover usage, the task just happens to run down the 5 hour window usage.

Are you willing to bet your account over whether you've read between the lines correctly? Anthropic aren't going to listen to appeals.

> the task just happens to run down the 5 hour window usage.

In a single prompt? From zero usage? That doesn't "just happen".

When you're using the SDK, yes it can. Example: I used the Python SDK to translate a bunch of source code recently. I spawned a subagent for each module that needed translating and left it to run for a few hours with a parallelism limit of 5. It blasted through the 5 hour usage and dug into extra usage credits.

I have zero assurances that the above can't result in a ban. The usage pattern is not distinct from OpenClaw.

As I said, it doesn't just happen, you explicitly had to set it up so it could happen.

I'm confused about this comment.

The GP has described a task which feels like a task very well within intended usage of CC, but can easily eat up the usage limit.

What should we read between the lines about this scenario?

Is it a bannable offense?

Just in case it wasn't clear, what they described doesn't need extra tooling. You can write this in your CLI and it will easily cap a Max 20x plan in an hour: "we are converting this entire codebase from TS to C#. Following the guidelines I've written in MIGRATION.md, convert each file individually. Use up to 32 parallel subagents. Track your work for each file in a PROGRESS.md file, which you will update for each file starting and completing. Using an agent team, as a secondary step, add a verification layer where you verify each file individually for accurate migration following the instructions in VERIFICATION.md"

Yea there are other ways to do this, you can set up a separate harness sure to make it more efficient, but just the above will also work, it's just text you paste into your CC terminal, and it will absolutely cap the largest subscription plan available no problem.

That "non-automated" part is where I feel like there is a lack of clarity. They even have some stuff in to allow for scheduling in Claude Code. Seems similar to a cron but "non-automated" would rule out using a cron (right?). I'd love to feel comfortable setting up daily/hourly tasks for Claude Code but that feels iffy. Like I said, I don't think the line is clear.

The lack of clarity doesn't matter because they obviously can't tell if you ran a claude -p a few times today with usual prompts or whether your cron job did. It's impossible for them to reliably tell.

It can tell if your cron is running them every 10 minutes 24/7, because basic biology rules out you doing that for more than a day or so.

Wait, this is news to me. I thought 3rd party use of the sub was unequivocally prohibited?

If I'm understanding you correctly: they changed that policy, you can now use 3rd party software unofficially with the undocumented Claude Code endpoint, and their servers auto-detect this and charge you extra for it?

EDIT: Yeah, something like that?

> Starting April 4 at 12pm PT / 8pm BST, you’ll no longer be able to use your Claude subscription limits for third-party harnesses including OpenClaw. Instead, they’ll require extra usage.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47633568

This seems to mean that unauthorized usage of the sub endpoint is tolerated now (and billed as though it were the regular API). And possibly affects claude -p, though I don't know yet.

> If I'm understanding you correctly: they changed that policy, you can now use 3rd party software unofficially with the undocumented Claude Code endpoint, and their servers auto-detect this and charge you extra for it?

That’s correct. It’s more like a convenience technicality: you can use your sub account, but you’re paying extra. So it doesn’t really count towards your subscription in any way.

Subscriptions can buy extra credits against a 30% discount, though, so it’s a decent amount cheaper than actual API, but still prohibitively expensive.

One month’s value in credits does not equal the value of one month’s subscription. They could have done better.

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