Because the value proposition that has people pay Anthropic is that it's the best LLM-coding tool around. When you're competing on "we can ban you from using the model we use with the same rate limits we use" everyone knows you have failed to do so.

They might or might not currently have the best coding LLM - but they're admitting that whatever moat they thought they were building with claude code is worthless. The best LLM meanwhile seems to change every few months.

They're clearly within their rights to do this, but it's also clearly embarrassing and calls into question the future of their business.

It is embarrassing to restrict an open source tool that is (IMO) a strictly and very superior piece of software from using your model. It is not immoral, like I said, because it's clearly against the ToC; but it's not like OC is stealing anything from Anthropic by existing. It's the same subscription, same usage.

Obviously, I have no idea what's going on internally. But it appears to be an issue of vanity rather than financials or theft. I don't think Anthropic is suffering harm from OC's "login" method; the correct response is to figure out why this other tool is better than yours and create better software. Shutting down the other tool, if that's what's in fact happening, is what is embarrassing.

As a user it is because I can no longer use the subscription with the greater tooling ecosystem.

As for Anthropic, they might not want to do this as they may lose users who decide to use another provider, since without the cost benefit of the subscription it doesn't make sense to stay with them and also be locked into their tooling.

The Claude plans allow you to send a number of messages to Anthropic models in a specific interval without incurring any extra costs. From Anthropic's "About Claude's Max Plan Usage" page:

> The number of messages you can send per session will vary based on the length of your messages, including the size of files you attach, the length of current conversation, and the model or feature you use. Your session-based usage limit will reset every five hours. If your conversations are relatively short and use a less compute-intensive model, with the Max plan at 5x more usage, you can expect to send at least 225 messages every five hours, and with the Max plan at 20x more usage, at least 900 messages every five hours, often more depending on message length, conversation length, and Claude's current capacity.

So it's not a "Claude Code" subscription, it's a "Claude" subscription.

The only piece of information that might suggest that there are any restrictions to using your subscription to access the models is the part of the Pro plan description that says "Access Claude Code on the web and in your terminal" and the Max plan description that says "Everything in Pro".

It is embarrassing, because it means they’re afraid of competition. If CC was so great, at least a fraction of they sell it, they wouldn’t need to do it.

"Leave the multibillion dollar company alone!"

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