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how can they even enforce this? can't you just spoof all your network requests to appear like it's coming from claude code? in any case Codex is a better SOTA

how can they even enforce this? can't you just spoof all your network requests to appear like it's coming from claude code? in any case Codex is a better SOTA anyways and they let you do this. and if you aren't interested in the best models, Mistral lets you use both Vibe and their API through your vibe subscription api key which is incredible.

baconner 9mo ago
They can't catch everything but they can make your product you're building on top of it non viable when it gets popular enough to look for, like they did with opencode.
- slopinthebag 9mo ago
  at least with open code you can just use a third party plugin to authenticate
charcircuit 9mo ago
You could tell by the prompt being used.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
tbrownaw 9mo ago
> how can they even enforce this? I would think that different tools would probably have different templates for their prompts?
Uehreka 9mo ago
> how can they even enforce this? Many ways, and they’re under no obligation to play fair and tell you which way they’re using at any given time. They’ve said what the rules are, they’ve said they’ll ban you if they catch you. So let’s say they enforce it by adding an extra nonstandard challenge-response handshake at the beginning of the exchange, which generates a token which they’ll expect on all requests going forward. You decompile the minified JS code, figure out the protocol, try it from your own code but accidentally mess up a small detail (you didn’t realize the nonce has a special suffix). Detected. Banned. You’ll need a new credit card to open a new account and try again. Better get the protocol right on the first try this time, because debugging is going to get expensive. Let’s say you get frustrated and post on Twitter about what you know so far. If you share info, they’ll probably see it eventually and change their method. They’ll probably change it once a month anyway and see who they catch that way (and presumably add a minimum Claude Code version needed to reach their servers). They’ve got hundreds of super smart coders and one of the most powerful AI models, they can do this all day.
- slopinthebag 9mo ago
  the internet has hundreds of thousands of super smart coders with the most powerful ai models as well, I think it's a bit harder than you're assuming. you just need to inspect the network traffic with Claude code and mimic that
  - raincole 9mo ago
    If your service's traffic is literally indistinguishable from Claude Code, then all it can do is what Claude Code does. Then why are the users going to choose your service instead of Claude Code?
    - slopinthebag 9mo ago
      Maybe because the UI doesn't flicker? There's a lot you can do to improve the UI for starters, and then the harness around the agent could also be improved upon, as long as the prompts are the same.
  - Uehreka 9mo ago
    OK sure, but you’d better hope Claude Code gets it right on the first try, or that’s $200 down the drain. Also, what if the detection mechanism involves a challenge-response that happens once a week? Or randomly a couple times a month? Or after 15 minutes of use from a new public IP? Or arbitrarily if you ask it to code something with a particular topic? There are lots of ways they could be doing this. And remember again, if they get you, they don’t have to tell you how they got you (so you might not be able to even glean information in return for the $200 you’d be losing). Sure the internet has hundreds of thousands of super smart coders, but the subset who are willing to throw money and credit cards down the drain in order to maintain a circumvention strategy for something like this is pretty low. I’m sure a few people will figure it out, but they won’t want to tell anyone lest Anthropic nerf their workaround, so I doubt that exploits of this will become widespread. And if you’re Anthropic, that’s probably good enough.
    - johnfn 9mo ago
paxys 9mo ago
Pretty easy to enforce it - rather than make raw queries to the LLM Claude Code can proxy through Anthropic's servers. The server can then enforce query patterns, system prompts and other stuff that outside apps cannot override.
cjpartridge 9mo ago
And once all the Claude subscribers move over to Codex subscriptions, I'd bet a large sum that OpenAI will make their own ToS update preventing automated/scripted usage.
techpression 9mo ago
We don’t enforce speed limits, but it sucks when you get caught. OpenAI will adjust, their investors will not allow money to be lost on ”being nice” forever, not until they’re handsomely paid back at least.

baconner 9mo ago

They can't catch everything but they can make your product you're building on top of it non viable when it gets popular enough to look for, like they did with opencode.

slopinthebag 9mo ago
at least with open code you can just use a third party plugin to authenticate

charcircuit 9mo ago

You could tell by the prompt being used.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

tbrownaw 9mo ago

> how can they even enforce this? I would think that different tools would probably have different templates for their prompts?

Uehreka 9mo ago

> how can they even enforce this? Many ways, and they’re under no obligation to play fair and tell you which way they’re using at any given time. They’ve said what the rules are, they’ve said they’ll ban you if they catch you. So let’s say they enforce it by adding an extra nonstandard challenge-response handshake at the beginning of the exchange, which generates a token which they’ll expect on all requests going forward. You decompile the minified JS code, figure out the protocol, try it from your own code but accidentally mess up a small detail (you didn’t realize the nonce has a special suffix). Detected. Banned. You’ll need a new credit card to open a new account and try again. Better get the protocol right on the first try this time, because debugging is going to get expensive. Let’s say you get frustrated and post on Twitter about what you know so far. If you share info, they’ll probably see it eventually and change their method. They’ll probably change it once a month anyway and see who they catch that way (and presumably add a minimum Claude Code version needed to reach their servers). They’ve got hundreds of super smart coders and one of the most powerful AI models, they can do this all day.

slopinthebag 9mo ago
the internet has hundreds of thousands of super smart coders with the most powerful ai models as well, I think it's a bit harder than you're assuming. you just need to inspect the network traffic with Claude code and mimic that
- raincole 9mo ago
  If your service's traffic is literally indistinguishable from Claude Code, then all it can do is what Claude Code does. Then why are the users going to choose your service instead of Claude Code?
  - slopinthebag 9mo ago
    Maybe because the UI doesn't flicker? There's a lot you can do to improve the UI for starters, and then the harness around the agent could also be improved upon, as long as the prompts are the same.
- Uehreka 9mo ago
  OK sure, but you’d better hope Claude Code gets it right on the first try, or that’s $200 down the drain. Also, what if the detection mechanism involves a challenge-response that happens once a week? Or randomly a couple times a month? Or after 15 minutes of use from a new public IP? Or arbitrarily if you ask it to code something with a particular topic? There are lots of ways they could be doing this. And remember again, if they get you, they don’t have to tell you how they got you (so you might not be able to even glean information in return for the $200 you’d be losing). Sure the internet has hundreds of thousands of super smart coders, but the subset who are willing to throw money and credit cards down the drain in order to maintain a circumvention strategy for something like this is pretty low. I’m sure a few people will figure it out, but they won’t want to tell anyone lest Anthropic nerf their workaround, so I doubt that exploits of this will become widespread. And if you’re Anthropic, that’s probably good enough.
  - johnfn 9mo ago

paxys 9mo ago

Pretty easy to enforce it - rather than make raw queries to the LLM Claude Code can proxy through Anthropic's servers. The server can then enforce query patterns, system prompts and other stuff that outside apps cannot override.

cjpartridge 9mo ago

And once all the Claude subscribers move over to Codex subscriptions, I'd bet a large sum that OpenAI will make their own ToS update preventing automated/scripted usage.

techpression 9mo ago

We don’t enforce speed limits, but it sucks when you get caught. OpenAI will adjust, their investors will not allow money to be lost on ”being nice” forever, not until they’re handsomely paid back at least.