5 ms·

I was all set to be pissed off, "you can't tell me what I can make with your product once you've sold it to me!" but no... This outrage bait hinges on the defin

by ctoth 9mo ago

I was all set to be pissed off, "you can't tell me what I can make with your product once you've sold it to me!" but no... This outrage bait hinges on the definition of "use" You can use Claude Code to write code to make a competitor for Claude Code. What you cannot do is reverse engineer the way the Claude Code harness uses the API to build your own version that taps into stuff like the max plan. Which? makes sense? From the thread: > A good rule of thumb is, are you launching a Claude code oauth screen and capturing the token. That is against terms of service.

whimsicalism 9mo ago
under the ToS, no - you cannot use claude code to make a competitor to claude code. but you’re right that that appears to mostly be unenforced. that said, it is absolutely being enforced against other big model labs who are mostly banned from using claude.
tcdent 9mo ago
This whole thing got blown out of proportion because the devs of third party harnesses that use the oauth API never disclosed that they were already actively sidestepping what is a very obvious message that the oauth API is for Claude Code only. What changed recently is that they added more restrictions for the shape of the payloads it accepts, not that they just started adding restrictions for the first time. TLDR You cannot reverse engineer the oauth API without encountering this message: https://tcdent-pub.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/cc_oauth_api_error.png https://tcdent-pub.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/cc_oauth_api_e...
- BoorishBears 9mo ago
  There's also a meta aspect here, where the leading third party harness in this discussion is run someone who's chronically steeped in Twitter drama and is definitely not rushing to put this to bed. Add in various 2nd/3rd place players (Codex and Copilot) with employees openly using their personal accounts to cash in on the situation and there's a lot of amplification going on here.
zzzeek 9mo ago
not really. Here's their own product clarifying: Based on the terms, Section 3, subsection 2 prohibits using Claude/Anthropic's Services: "To develop any products or services that compete with our Services, including to develop or train any artificial intelligence or machine learning algorithms or models or resell the Services." Clarification: This restriction is specifically about competitive use - you cannot use Claude to build products that compete with Anthropic's offerings. What IS prohibited: - Using Claude to develop a competing AI assistant or chatbot service - Training models that would directly compete with Claude's capabilities - Building a product that would be a substitute for Anthropic's services What is NOT prohibited: - General ML/AI development for your own applications (computer vision, recommendation systems, fraud detection, etc.) - Using Claude as a coding assistant for ML projects - Training domain-specific models for your business needs - Research and educational ML work - Any ML development that doesn't create a competing AI service In short: I can absolutely help you develop and train ML models for legitimate use cases. The restriction only applies if you're trying to build something that would compete directly with Claude/Anthropic's core business. So you can't use Claude to build your own chatbot that does anything remotely like Claude, which would be, basically any LLM chatbot.
- davorak 9mo ago
  > This restriction is specifically about competitive use - you cannot use Claude to build products that compete with Anthropic's offerings. I am not a lawyer, regardless of the list of examples below(I have been told examples in contracts and TOS are a mixed bag for enforceability), this text says that if anthropic decides to make a product like yours you have to stop using Claude for that product. That is a pretty powerful argument against depending heavily on or solely on Claude.
  - ffsm8 9mo ago
    It may or may not be enforceable in the court of law, but they'll definitely ban you if they notice you... And I'm pretty sure ban evasion can become an issue in the court of law, even if the original TOS may not hold up
huevosabio 9mo ago
Yes, I think this makes sense. I think if you are paying by token w/ an API key, then you're good to go, but if you're hijacking their login system then that's a different story.
behnamoh 9mo ago
> You can use Claude Code to write code to make a competitor for Claude Code. No, the ToS literally says you cannot.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- dude250711 9mo ago
  Does it mean it will be outright banned in China? Otherwise I see DeepCode coming...
  - g947o 9mo ago
    It already is. https://www.anthropic.com/news/updating-restrictions-of-sales-to-unsupported-regions https://www.anthropic.com/news/updating-restrictions-of-sale... And Anthropic really goes out their way in banning China. Other model providers do a decent job at restricting access in general but look away when someone tries to circumvent those restrictions. But Claude uses extra mechanisms to make it hard. And the CEO was on record about China issues: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/01/nvidia-and-anthropic-clash-over-us-ai-chip-restrictions-on-china.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/01/nvidia-and-anthropic-clash-o...
    - s1mplicissimus 9mo ago
      I wonder how that ban would be enforced, considering VPNs/tunnels are a thing
- behnamoh 9mo ago
  What's worse is that Anthropic also goes after customers who bought their services through intermediaries, even if the service was API (not subscription). If you use Claude models through CURSOR, Anthropic still applies its own policies on usage. Just recently they cut off xAI employees' access to Claude models on Cursor [0]. X has threatened to ban Anthropic from X. [0]: https://x.com/kyliebytes/status/2009686466746822731?s=46 https://x.com/kyliebytes/status/2009686466746822731?s=46
airstrike 9mo ago
The trick is to use Codex to write a Claude Code clone, Claude Code to write an Antigravity clone, and Antigravity to write a Codex clone. Good luck catching me, I'm behind 7 proxies.
- dathinab 9mo ago
  or you just do it and be in the EU it's a clear anti-competive clause by a dominant market leader, such clauses tend to be void AFIK
  - atonse 9mo ago
    Who is the dominant market leader? OpenAI dwarfs Anthropic. Most people still haven’t heard of Anthropic/Claude. (For the record, I use Claude code all day long. But it’s still pretty niche outside of programming.)
    - andyferris 9mo ago
      We are discussing Claude Code clones - the market _is_ programming
    - airstrike 9mo ago
      Those are different markets
    - PeterStuer 9mo ago
      In agentic development Claude models rule the roost.
  - hinkley 9mo ago
    It might suffice to just make it look like you’re European to keep their goons from harassing you, which hasn’t happened yet but will, because that’s how these stories always end. Get a PO Box for a credit card and VPN in through Europe.
    - Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
gloomyday 9mo ago
We have to train ourselves to not be pissed off at headlines. They are most of the time bait.

by ctoth 9mo ago

whimsicalism 9mo ago

under the ToS, no - you cannot use claude code to make a competitor to claude code. but you’re right that that appears to mostly be unenforced. that said, it is absolutely being enforced against other big model labs who are mostly banned from using claude.

tcdent 9mo ago

This whole thing got blown out of proportion because the devs of third party harnesses that use the oauth API never disclosed that they were already actively sidestepping what is a very obvious message that the oauth API is for Claude Code only. What changed recently is that they added more restrictions for the shape of the payloads it accepts, not that they just started adding restrictions for the first time. TLDR You cannot reverse engineer the oauth API without encountering this message: https://tcdent-pub.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/cc_oauth_api_error.png https://tcdent-pub.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/cc_oauth_api_e...

BoorishBears 9mo ago
There's also a meta aspect here, where the leading third party harness in this discussion is run someone who's chronically steeped in Twitter drama and is definitely not rushing to put this to bed. Add in various 2nd/3rd place players (Codex and Copilot) with employees openly using their personal accounts to cash in on the situation and there's a lot of amplification going on here.

zzzeek 9mo ago

not really. Here's their own product clarifying: Based on the terms, Section 3, subsection 2 prohibits using Claude/Anthropic's Services: "To develop any products or services that compete with our Services, including to develop or train any artificial intelligence or machine learning algorithms or models or resell the Services." Clarification: This restriction is specifically about competitive use - you cannot use Claude to build products that compete with Anthropic's offerings. What IS prohibited: - Using Claude to develop a competing AI assistant or chatbot service - Training models that would directly compete with Claude's capabilities - Building a product that would be a substitute for Anthropic's services What is NOT prohibited: - General ML/AI development for your own applications (computer vision, recommendation systems, fraud detection, etc.) - Using Claude as a coding assistant for ML projects - Training domain-specific models for your business needs - Research and educational ML work - Any ML development that doesn't create a competing AI service In short: I can absolutely help you develop and train ML models for legitimate use cases. The restriction only applies if you're trying to build something that would compete directly with Claude/Anthropic's core business. So you can't use Claude to build your own chatbot that does anything remotely like Claude, which would be, basically any LLM chatbot.

davorak 9mo ago
> This restriction is specifically about competitive use - you cannot use Claude to build products that compete with Anthropic's offerings. I am not a lawyer, regardless of the list of examples below(I have been told examples in contracts and TOS are a mixed bag for enforceability), this text says that if anthropic decides to make a product like yours you have to stop using Claude for that product. That is a pretty powerful argument against depending heavily on or solely on Claude.
- ffsm8 9mo ago
  It may or may not be enforceable in the court of law, but they'll definitely ban you if they notice you... And I'm pretty sure ban evasion can become an issue in the court of law, even if the original TOS may not hold up

huevosabio 9mo ago

Yes, I think this makes sense. I think if you are paying by token w/ an API key, then you're good to go, but if you're hijacking their login system then that's a different story.

behnamoh 9mo ago

> You can use Claude Code to write code to make a competitor for Claude Code. No, the ToS literally says you cannot.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
dude250711 9mo ago
Does it mean it will be outright banned in China? Otherwise I see DeepCode coming...
- g947o 9mo ago
  It already is. https://www.anthropic.com/news/updating-restrictions-of-sales-to-unsupported-regions https://www.anthropic.com/news/updating-restrictions-of-sale... And Anthropic really goes out their way in banning China. Other model providers do a decent job at restricting access in general but look away when someone tries to circumvent those restrictions. But Claude uses extra mechanisms to make it hard. And the CEO was on record about China issues: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/01/nvidia-and-anthropic-clash-over-us-ai-chip-restrictions-on-china.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/01/nvidia-and-anthropic-clash-o...
  - s1mplicissimus 9mo ago
    I wonder how that ban would be enforced, considering VPNs/tunnels are a thing
behnamoh 9mo ago
What's worse is that Anthropic also goes after customers who bought their services through intermediaries, even if the service was API (not subscription). If you use Claude models through CURSOR, Anthropic still applies its own policies on usage. Just recently they cut off xAI employees' access to Claude models on Cursor [0]. X has threatened to ban Anthropic from X. [0]: https://x.com/kyliebytes/status/2009686466746822731?s=46 https://x.com/kyliebytes/status/2009686466746822731?s=46

airstrike 9mo ago

The trick is to use Codex to write a Claude Code clone, Claude Code to write an Antigravity clone, and Antigravity to write a Codex clone. Good luck catching me, I'm behind 7 proxies.

dathinab 9mo ago
or you just do it and be in the EU it's a clear anti-competive clause by a dominant market leader, such clauses tend to be void AFIK
- atonse 9mo ago
  Who is the dominant market leader? OpenAI dwarfs Anthropic. Most people still haven’t heard of Anthropic/Claude. (For the record, I use Claude code all day long. But it’s still pretty niche outside of programming.)
  - andyferris 9mo ago
    We are discussing Claude Code clones - the market _is_ programming
  - airstrike 9mo ago
    Those are different markets
  - PeterStuer 9mo ago
    In agentic development Claude models rule the roost.
- hinkley 9mo ago
  It might suffice to just make it look like you’re European to keep their goons from harassing you, which hasn’t happened yet but will, because that’s how these stories always end. Get a PO Box for a credit card and VPN in through Europe.
  - Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago

gloomyday 9mo ago

We have to train ourselves to not be pissed off at headlines. They are most of the time bait.