5 ms·

Your core customers are clearly having a blast building their own custom interfaces, so obviously the thing to do is update TOS and put a stop to it! Good job l

Your core customers are clearly having a blast building their own custom interfaces, so obviously the thing to do is update TOS and put a stop to it! Good job lol. I know, I know, customer experience, ecosystem, gardens, moats, CC isn't fat, just big boned, I get it. Still a dick move. This policy is souring the relationship, and basically saying that Claude isn't a keeper. I'll keep my eye-watering sub for now because it's still working out, but this ensures I won't feel bad about leaving when the time comes. Update: yes yes, API, I know. No, I don't want that. I just want the expensive predictable bill, not metered corporate pricing just to hack on my client.

g-mork 8mo ago
Imagine having a finite pool of GPUs worth more than their weight in gold, and an infinite pool of users obsessed with running as many queries against those GPUs in parallel as possible, mostly to review and generate copious amounts of spam content primarily for the purposes of feeling modern, and all in return for which they offer you $20 per month. If you let them, you must incur as much credit liability as OpenAI. If you don't, you get destroyed online. It almost makes me feel sorry for Dario despite fundamentally disliking him as a person.
- echelon 8mo ago
  Why do you fundamentally dislike him as a person? The only thing I've seen from him that I don't like is the "SWEs will be replaced" line (which is probably true and it's more that I don't like the factuality of it).
  - baq 8mo ago
    It’s kinda obvious he’s a well spoken shark. Personally not an issue for me, you have to be at the top of a unicorn, but it isn’t something people in general like.
    - mentalgear 8mo ago
      Interesting, are there any sources for the shark claims ? I recently saw an interview with Hassabis and him and thought: <well at least those are two actual scientist leading AI labs/devisions>, so that gave me some hope that what they discussed regarding security and eventual equal distribution of "AI" benefits had some genuine intention.
- chickensong 8mo ago
  Hello old friend, I've been expecting you. First of all, custom harness parallel agent people are so far from the norm, and certainly not on the $20 plan, which doesn't even make sense because you'd hit token limit in about 90 seconds. Second, token limits. Does Anthropic secretly have over-subscription issues? Don't know, don't care. If I'm paying a blistering monthly fee, I should be able to use up to the limit. Now I know you've got a clear view of the typical user, but FWIW, I'm just an aging hacker using CC to build some personal projects (feeling modern ofc) but still driving, no yolo or gas town style. I've reached the point where I have a nice workflow, and CC is pretty decent, but it feels like it's putting on weight and adding things I don't want or need. I think LLMs are an exciting new interface to computers, but I don't want to be tied to someone else's idea of a client, especially not one that's changing so rapidly. I'd like to roll my own client to interface with the model, or maybe try out some other alternatives, but that's against the TOS, because: reasons. And no, I'm not interested in paying metered corporate rates for API access. I pay for a Max account, it's expensive, but predictable. The issue is Anthropic is trying for force users into using their tool, but that's not going to work for something so generic as interfacing with an LLM. Some folks want emacs while others want vim, and there will never be a consensus on the best editor (it's nvim btw), because developers are opinionated and have strong preferences for how they interface with computers. I switched to CC maybe a year ago and haven't looked back, but this is a major disappointment. I don't give a shit about Anthropic's credit liability, I just want the freedom to hack on my own client.
  - g-mork 8mo ago
    You're not "rolling your own client." You're using a subscription that prices in a specific usage pattern, the one mediated by their client, and trying to route around it to extract more value than you're paying for. That's not hacking, it's arbitrage, and pretending it's about editor philosophy is cope. Anthropic sells two products: a consumer subscription with a UI, and an API with metered pricing. You want the API product at the subscription price. That's not a principled stance about interface freedom, it's just wanting something for less than it costs. The nvim analogy doesn't land either. Nobody's stopping you from writing your own client. You just have to pay API rates for it, because that's the product that matches what you're describing. The subscription subsidises the cost per token by constraining how you use it. Remove the constraint, the economics break. This isn't complicated. "I don't give a shit about Anthropic's credit liability," right, but they do, because it's their business. You're not entitled to a flat-rate all-you-can-eat API just because you find metered pricing aesthetically displeasing.
baq 8mo ago
Don’t be mad at it, be happy you were able to throw some of that sweet free vc money at your hobbies instead of paying the market rate.
- chickensong 8mo ago
  Oh I'm not mad, it's more of a sad clown type of thing. I'm still stoked to use it for now. We can always go back to the old ways if things don't work out.
weird-eye-issue 8mo ago
That's what the API is for.
charcircuit 8mo ago
They offer an API for people who want to build their own clients. They didn't stop people from being able to use Claude.
- dawnerd 8mo ago
  at a significantly higher price... which of course is why they're doing this.
nostromo 8mo ago
They'll all do this eventually. We're in the part of the market cycle where everyone fights for marketshare by selling dollar bills for 50 cents. When a winner emerges they'll pull the rug out from under you and try to wall off their garden. Anthropic just forgot that we're still in the "functioning market competition" phase of AI and not yet in the "unstoppable monopoly" phase.
- bambax 8mo ago
  Unstoppable monopoly will be extremely hard to pull off given the number of quality open (weights) alternatives. I only use LLMs through OpenRouter and switch somewhat randomly between frontier models; they each have some amount of personality but I wouldn't mind much if half of them disappeared overnight, as long as the other half remained available.
  - nostromo 8mo ago
    I'm old, so I remember saying the same thing about Google and search. I hope you're right!
    - juliendorra 8mo ago
      In the first years, I remember no other search engine was close to Google quality. We all ditched AltaVista because Google was incredibly better. It would have been awful to switch back to any other options. We can already switch between the 3 big proprietary models without feeling too much differences, so it’s quite a different landscape.
      - bambax 8mo ago
        Yes, my point exactly.
    - bambax 8mo ago
      I too am old. Google search is free, hard to replicate, and while there used to be lots of search engines, Google was (and arguably still is) miles ahead of all the others in terms of quality and performance. A model is hard to train but it doesn't need to be hyper up to date / have a new version come out every day. Inference is cheap (it seems?) and quality is comparable. So it's unclear how expensive offerings could win over free alternatives. I could be wrong of course. I don't have a crystal ball. I just don't think this is the same as Google. Of course I could be entirely mistaken and there could emerge a single winner
TZubiri 8mo ago
Sure they are having a blast, they are paying 20$ instead of getting charged hundreds for forr tokens. It's simple, follow the ToS
lvl155 8mo ago
So basically you are saying Anthropic models are indispensable but you are too cheap to pay for it.
- chickensong 8mo ago
  Nowhere did I say they're indispensable, and I explicitly said I'm still paying for it. If all AI companies disappear tomorrow that's fine. I'm just calling out what I think is tone-deaf move, by a company I pay a large monthly bill to.

g-mork 8mo ago

Imagine having a finite pool of GPUs worth more than their weight in gold, and an infinite pool of users obsessed with running as many queries against those GPUs in parallel as possible, mostly to review and generate copious amounts of spam content primarily for the purposes of feeling modern, and all in return for which they offer you $20 per month. If you let them, you must incur as much credit liability as OpenAI. If you don't, you get destroyed online. It almost makes me feel sorry for Dario despite fundamentally disliking him as a person.

echelon 8mo ago
Why do you fundamentally dislike him as a person? The only thing I've seen from him that I don't like is the "SWEs will be replaced" line (which is probably true and it's more that I don't like the factuality of it).
- baq 8mo ago
  It’s kinda obvious he’s a well spoken shark. Personally not an issue for me, you have to be at the top of a unicorn, but it isn’t something people in general like.
  - mentalgear 8mo ago
    Interesting, are there any sources for the shark claims ? I recently saw an interview with Hassabis and him and thought: <well at least those are two actual scientist leading AI labs/devisions>, so that gave me some hope that what they discussed regarding security and eventual equal distribution of "AI" benefits had some genuine intention.
chickensong 8mo ago
Hello old friend, I've been expecting you. First of all, custom harness parallel agent people are so far from the norm, and certainly not on the $20 plan, which doesn't even make sense because you'd hit token limit in about 90 seconds. Second, token limits. Does Anthropic secretly have over-subscription issues? Don't know, don't care. If I'm paying a blistering monthly fee, I should be able to use up to the limit. Now I know you've got a clear view of the typical user, but FWIW, I'm just an aging hacker using CC to build some personal projects (feeling modern ofc) but still driving, no yolo or gas town style. I've reached the point where I have a nice workflow, and CC is pretty decent, but it feels like it's putting on weight and adding things I don't want or need. I think LLMs are an exciting new interface to computers, but I don't want to be tied to someone else's idea of a client, especially not one that's changing so rapidly. I'd like to roll my own client to interface with the model, or maybe try out some other alternatives, but that's against the TOS, because: reasons. And no, I'm not interested in paying metered corporate rates for API access. I pay for a Max account, it's expensive, but predictable. The issue is Anthropic is trying for force users into using their tool, but that's not going to work for something so generic as interfacing with an LLM. Some folks want emacs while others want vim, and there will never be a consensus on the best editor (it's nvim btw), because developers are opinionated and have strong preferences for how they interface with computers. I switched to CC maybe a year ago and haven't looked back, but this is a major disappointment. I don't give a shit about Anthropic's credit liability, I just want the freedom to hack on my own client.
- g-mork 8mo ago
  You're not "rolling your own client." You're using a subscription that prices in a specific usage pattern, the one mediated by their client, and trying to route around it to extract more value than you're paying for. That's not hacking, it's arbitrage, and pretending it's about editor philosophy is cope. Anthropic sells two products: a consumer subscription with a UI, and an API with metered pricing. You want the API product at the subscription price. That's not a principled stance about interface freedom, it's just wanting something for less than it costs. The nvim analogy doesn't land either. Nobody's stopping you from writing your own client. You just have to pay API rates for it, because that's the product that matches what you're describing. The subscription subsidises the cost per token by constraining how you use it. Remove the constraint, the economics break. This isn't complicated. "I don't give a shit about Anthropic's credit liability," right, but they do, because it's their business. You're not entitled to a flat-rate all-you-can-eat API just because you find metered pricing aesthetically displeasing.

baq 8mo ago

Don’t be mad at it, be happy you were able to throw some of that sweet free vc money at your hobbies instead of paying the market rate.

chickensong 8mo ago
Oh I'm not mad, it's more of a sad clown type of thing. I'm still stoked to use it for now. We can always go back to the old ways if things don't work out.

weird-eye-issue 8mo ago

That's what the API is for.

charcircuit 8mo ago

They offer an API for people who want to build their own clients. They didn't stop people from being able to use Claude.

dawnerd 8mo ago
at a significantly higher price... which of course is why they're doing this.

nostromo 8mo ago

They'll all do this eventually. We're in the part of the market cycle where everyone fights for marketshare by selling dollar bills for 50 cents. When a winner emerges they'll pull the rug out from under you and try to wall off their garden. Anthropic just forgot that we're still in the "functioning market competition" phase of AI and not yet in the "unstoppable monopoly" phase.

bambax 8mo ago
Unstoppable monopoly will be extremely hard to pull off given the number of quality open (weights) alternatives. I only use LLMs through OpenRouter and switch somewhat randomly between frontier models; they each have some amount of personality but I wouldn't mind much if half of them disappeared overnight, as long as the other half remained available.
- nostromo 8mo ago
  I'm old, so I remember saying the same thing about Google and search. I hope you're right!
  - juliendorra 8mo ago
    In the first years, I remember no other search engine was close to Google quality. We all ditched AltaVista because Google was incredibly better. It would have been awful to switch back to any other options. We can already switch between the 3 big proprietary models without feeling too much differences, so it’s quite a different landscape.
    - bambax 8mo ago
      Yes, my point exactly.
  - bambax 8mo ago
    I too am old. Google search is free, hard to replicate, and while there used to be lots of search engines, Google was (and arguably still is) miles ahead of all the others in terms of quality and performance. A model is hard to train but it doesn't need to be hyper up to date / have a new version come out every day. Inference is cheap (it seems?) and quality is comparable. So it's unclear how expensive offerings could win over free alternatives. I could be wrong of course. I don't have a crystal ball. I just don't think this is the same as Google. Of course I could be entirely mistaken and there could emerge a single winner

TZubiri 8mo ago

Sure they are having a blast, they are paying 20$ instead of getting charged hundreds for forr tokens. It's simple, follow the ToS

lvl155 8mo ago

So basically you are saying Anthropic models are indispensable but you are too cheap to pay for it.

chickensong 8mo ago
Nowhere did I say they're indispensable, and I explicitly said I'm still paying for it. If all AI companies disappear tomorrow that's fine. I'm just calling out what I think is tone-deaf move, by a company I pay a large monthly bill to.