alt Hacker NewsI've been doing something a lot like this, using a claude-desktop instance attached to my personal mcp server to spawn claude-code worker nodes for things, and for a month or two now it's been working great using the main desktop chat as a project manager of sorts. I even started paying for MAX plan as I've been using it effectively to write software now (I am NOT a developer).
Lately it's gotten entirely flaky, where chat's will just stop working, simply ignoring new prompots, and otherwise go unresponsive. I wondered if maybe I'm pissing them off somehow like the author of this article did.
Now even worse is Claude seemingly has no real support channel. You get their AI bot, and that's about it. Eventually it will offer to put you through to a human, and then tell you that don't wait for them, they'll contact you via email. That email never comes after several attempts.
I'm assuming at this point any real support is all smoke and mirrors, meaning I'm paying for a service now that has become almost unusable, with absolutely NO means of support to fix it. I guess for all the cool tech, customer support is something they have not figured out.
I love Claude as it's an amazing tool, but when it starts to implode on itself that you actually require some out-of-box support, there is NONE to be had. Grok seems the only real alternative, and over my dead body would I use anything from "him".
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> I'm paying for a service now that has become almost unusable, with absolutely NO means of support to fix it.
Isn’t the future of support a series of automations and LLMs? I mean, have you considered that the AI bot is their tech support, and that it’s about to be everyone else’s approach too?
The desktop app is pretty terrible and super flaky, throwing vague errors all the time. Claude code seems to be doing much better. I also use it for non-code related tasks.
> Lately it's gotten entirely flaky, where chat's will just stop working
This happens to me more often than not both in the Claude Desktop and in web. It seems that longer the conversation goes the more likely it is to happen. Frustrating.
> I've been using it effectively to write software now (I am NOT a developer)
What have you found it useful for? I'm curious about how people without software backgrounds work with it to build software.
Have a max plan, didn't use it much the last few days. Just used it to explain me a few things with examples for a ttrpg. It just hanged up a few times.
Max plan and in average I use it ten times a day? Yeah, I am cancel. Guess they don't need me
Have you tried any of the leading open weight models, like GLM etc. And how does chatGPT or Gemini compare?
And kudos for refusing to use anything from the guy who's OK with his platform proliferating generated CSAM.
> where chat's will just stop working, simply ignoring new prompots, and otherwise go unresponsive
I had this start happening around August/September and by December or so I chose to cancel my subscription.
I haven't noticed this at work so I'm not sure if they're prioritizing certain seats or how that works.
Serious question, why is codex and mistral(vibe) not a real alternative?
Gemini CLI is a solid alternative to Claude Code. The limits are restrictive, though. If you're paying for Max, I can't imagine Gemini CLI will take you very far.
Folks a solution might be to use the claude models inside the latest copilot. Copilot is good. Try it out. Latest versions improving all the time. You get plenty of usage at reasonable price.
Anthropic has been flying by the seat of their pants for a while now and it shows across the board. From the terminal flashing bug that’s been around for months to the lack of support to instabilities in Claude mobile and Code for the web (I get 10-20% message failure rates on the former and 5-10% on CC for web).
They’re growing too fast and it’s bursting the seams of the company. If there’s ever a correction in the AI industry, I think that will all quickly come back to bite them. It’s like Claude Code is vibe-operating the entire company.