>They have to be honest about what they can offer for $200

Their expectation must have been a human using the service at a human capacity.

This is different from an automated agent orchestrating a ton of different agents at the same time doing a lot of things.

There is a difference.

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dimmke 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If people are finding new ways to use AI, they should change how they bill. Banning third party harnesses is bad for a lot of reasons - it looks like they're trying to force people to use their software. Strategically it might make sense - gives them a tiny moat if their models ever slip - but it discourages the breakneck pace of innovation and the long term effect is that their customers (largely highly skilled with computers and building software) will look to decouple themselves. Claude is good but it's not so far better than anything else that they can pull shit like this and people will just deal with it.

They already have the regular subscription plans (Pro, Max) and a separate billing process for direct API usage. They could absolutely introduce another type of plan optimized toward this kind of usage or just accept that it's a dumb pipe that is being paid for and having these random arbitrary limitations is just making things more confusing and a bad plan for the future.

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gbear605 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They already have the way that you're supposed to bill for usages like this, the API usage. The purpose of the subscription plan is strictly for the cases where you are using few enough tokens on average that it's not a money pit for them.

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what 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They don’t need to change how they bill. Your subscription is for Claude app/code. Otherwise you pay per token. It’s always been this way.

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dimmke 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Claude Code is a subscription tier explicitly designed for agentic, automated, heavy usage. So the 'subscriptions are for human use, API is for automation' line is already blurry by their own offerings.

If the actual concern is use pattern, enforce that directly. What we have instead is metered usage + behavioral restrictions + product fragmentation across three separate offerings.

That's not a clean billing philosophy, it's layers of control stacked on top of each other with no coherent logic tying them together.

If subscriptions are for humans and API is for automation, fine. But then don't meter the human product arbitrarily and don't sell a subscription tier for automation while also restricting automation. Pick a lane.

	▲	tomnipotent an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Claude Code is a subscription tier explicitly designed for agentic, automated, heavy usage Except it's not. It's a desktop, web, mobile, and CLI subscription product built on top of a usage-based API with a generous token allowance bundled with it. That generous allowance comes with the restriction that those tokens can only be spent through Claude product surfaces. Why would Anthropic offer their API at a loss and subsidize the profits and growth of other businesses?

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bitwize 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Start paying by the token if you want to use these tools. Simple as.

	▲	toraway 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Even better: switch to Codex plus get better rate limits. I’m not a captive audience as much Anthropic would like to believe otherwise.

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muyuu 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You are correct, but you don't need openclaw to batch your work. People will figure out ways to use their tokens at that fixed price.

Sure there is a difference. It's like when most mobile companies wouldn't allow tethering because then people would actually use the service.

You can try to stop that, but people will price in those inconveniences. They will simply learn that the fee pays for much less than the token limit and that the company is enforcing some unwritten limits by adding extra limitations to usage.

We will see it play out.

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lifeformed 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The whole industry is about robots telling robots what to do, why wouldn't they have expected automation?