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.

As my sibling mentioned, it's not all-you-can-eat, it's metered and capped. Is it the client mediating usage patterns? I don't know, but why not do it server-side and let people use it however they want? Control of course, but that's not in the interest of users.

I'm not trying to arbitrage or route around anything, I just want predictable billing to access the model. Maybe the API would be cheaper for me, I don't know. I'm just a normal user, not scheduling an agent army to blast at maximum 24/7.

You don't need to explain what Anthropic is selling, I get it, but you're off-base claiming that I'm pretending about editor philosophy as cope. I think Anthropic is where they are today because they have a good model for coding, made popular by software folks who value things like editor choice and customization. Anthropic is free to do as they wish of course, as am I, but I'm displeased with their decision here, and voicing my opinion about it.

If usage is truly constrained by the client not the server, I guess I can't argue that, but it still feels bad as an end user. As a consumer, I just want a fair deal and freedom to use what I purchase however I see fit. But that seems harder to find these days, and most businesses seem intent on maximum extraction by any means possible. I might be wrong, but this feels like business move to build a consumer moat by controlling the interface, because consumers don't want the API. It's not in my best interests, which alienates me as a customer.

It seems to me the consumer subscription still has metered token limits (it's not all you can eat), so why should it matter how we use those tokens?