> So... maybe we can still use third party harnesses with Claude Code subscriptions... for now?

The way I read this is: yes, if the third party harness uses Anthropic's Agent SDK. Most of them do not, AFAIK, and are still against ToS (though maybe its not enforced for now)

Something that many don't realize is that Claude Desktop and the Agent SDK are both just wrappers around pools of CLI instances, literally running `claude --input-format stream-json --output-format stream-json`.

So this wasn't even about third-party harnesses that replace the toolset Claude has access to, and try to call the Claude API with subsidized credentials. No, this was literally a blessing for their desktop UI's over others, all driving Claude Code's CLI at the end of the day.

To the broader point, it's hard not to see that as arbitrary and borderline spyware. Software that sniffs the context in which it's executed and uses that to phone home about billing is the type of thing you'd expect from the most corporate parts of the gaming industry, not a frontier lab, but here we are.

I believe you're right and I'm familiar with the actual distinction – the confusion is mostly about how they _feel_ about it, and what'll change from here.