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