alt Hacker NewsHello 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.
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.