| ▲ | merlindru 5 hours ago |
| claude -p is allowed as far as I'm aware. if i understand correctly, they even have a wrapper around it to make it easier to use: the Claude Agent SDK the thing that's disallowed is pretending you're the claude binary, logging in through OAuth in other words, if you use some product thats not Claude Code, and your browser opens asking you to "give Claude Code access to your account", you're in hot water as for how they detect it: they say they use heuristics and usage patterns. if something falls wildly out of the distribution it's a ban. my take is that the problem is not the means of detection. that's fine and seems to work well. the problem is that its an instant outright ban. they should give you a couple warning emails, then a timeout, etc. |
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| ▲ | adastra22 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| The Claude Agent SDK is explicitly disallowed from subscription use, as of a few days ago. |
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| ▲ | BoorishBears an hour ago | parent [-] | | No it's not. You can't offer OAuth + the Claude Agent SDK in your own product, but you can use Claude Agent SDK locally by signing in through Claude Code. It's no different than using Claude Code directly. | | |
| ▲ | azuanrb an hour ago | parent [-] | | I’m aware of the tweet that says otherwise, but until they update their legal documentation, it’s still not allowed. > OAuth authentication (used with Free, Pro, and Max plans) is intended exclusively for Claude Code and Claude.ai. Using OAuth tokens obtained through Claude Free, Pro, or Max accounts in any other product, tool, or service — including the Agent SDK — is not permitted and constitutes a violation of the Consumer Terms of Service. https://code.claude.com/docs/en/legal-and-compliance#authent... | | |
| ▲ | BoorishBears an hour ago | parent [-] | | It's not about a tweet, just read your own quote. You cannot authenticate with anything but Claude Code and Claude.ai. But you do not need to authenticate with Claude Agent SDK (even though you can using env variables). When you authenticate with Claude Code (allowed), Claude Agent SDK works without any further authentication. It's really annoying that people keep trying to make this complicated because the inevitable end result is that they remove authless usage of the Agent SDK and save themselves the headache. I really hate Clawdb-Moltb-OpenC-NanoCode or whatever half-baked project the grifters are on this week for ruining a good thing for the rest of us. |
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| ▲ | akssassin907 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The heuristic detection approach is fine. The penalty ladder is broken. Reasonable progression: warning email → quota throttle → AI Pro subscription suspended → Google account suspended. They skipped to step 4 on a first offense, paid account, no appeal. That's not a terms enforcement system, that's a hostage situation. "Comply or lose your digital life." The real lesson isn't "don't use OpenClaw." It's: never let one company own your primary identity infrastructure. |
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| ▲ | gopil 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is OpenClaw a product though? It's more like a system/framework. |
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| ▲ | skeledrew 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why a couple warnings and timeout? 1 warning that the next incident will lead to a ban should be enough. Treat people like adults, not kids. |
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| ▲ | nikcub 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > they say they use heuristics and usage patterns. cache hit rate alone would stand out |
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| ▲ | mvdtnz 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why do you mean by this? What cache? | | |
| ▲ | mirashii 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Generally speaking, there's prompt caching that can be enabled in the API with things like this: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/prompt... For a specific harness, they've all found ways to optimize to get higher cache hit rates with their harness. Common system prompts and all, and more and more users hitting cache really makes the cost of inference go down dramatically. What bothers me about a lot of the discussion about providers disallowing other harnesses with the subscription plans around here is the complete lack of awareness of how economies of scale from common caching practices across more users can enable the higher, cheaper quotas subscriptions give you. | | |
| ▲ | lurkshark 6 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I feel like a lot of this would go away if they made a different API for the “only for use with our client” subscriptions. A different API from the generic one, that moved some of their client behaviors up to the server seems like it would solve all this. People would still reverse engineer to use it in other tools but it would be less useful (due to the forced scaffolding instead of entirely generic completions API) and also ease the burden on their inference compute. I’m sure they went with reusing the generic completions API to iterate faster and make it easier to support both subscription and pay-per-token users in the same client, but it feels like they’re burning trust/goodwill when a technical solution could at least be attempted. |
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| ▲ | nikcub 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | prompt caching - big part of the reason why they can economically offer claude code plans. one of the ant team explain it here: https://x.com/trq212/status/2024574133011673516 |
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