Hacker News Reader

Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

Claude Code is a freely downloadable CLI Agent. Why would they not let you use that anymore?

Because 'claude -p' is a backdoor for any third party client to use subsidized token pricing, and they've flipped course again to decide they do want the OpenClaw type users as long as they're on the $100 plan.

> Because 'claude -p' is a backdoor for any third party client to use subsidized token pricing

Wasn't this obvious from day 1 though? Can't see how anyone could've missed that.

It was obvious, which is why their earlier decision to attempt to restrict 3p access was hugely unpopular. They're now trying to walk that back but on the condition that those users need to be on the higher plan.

Now they're hurting their popularity with those who actually don't mind using Claude Code. I've been quietly swallowing a lot of performance degradation over the past few weeks as I get the resource crunch, but I'm definitely not going back to copy-pasting between browser and editor. And I have no intention of upgrading to Max or doing per token usage.

It seems they were losing money on pro subscriptions with code so if people stop using them it's actually ok for them.

They have now moved to be enterprise providers and don't need the cheap pro users as loss leaders anymore.

The question isn't whether anyone could have missed it, but whether Claude Code has release gates that allow people to require that obvious problems should be resolved. From their release velocity it's pretty clear that they do not.

You have to login and authorize it? It costs money to process tokens.

Because including it in a plan results in un-metered usage?

My usage of Claude Code in the pro plan is definitely metered. Every couple hours I have to wait an hour or two and the last few weeks I've hit my weekly limit on Wednesday.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com