alt Hacker NewsBut the question is - why is the -p flag fine? It hits the same endpoints with the same OAuth token and same quotas.
Comments section here and on related news from Anthropic seems to be centered around the idea that the reason for these bans is that it burns tokens quickly, while their plans are subsidized. What changes with the -p flag? You're just using cli instead of HTTP.
Are the metrics from their cli more valuable than the treasure trove of prompt data that passes through to them either way that justifies this PR?
Replies
> Are the metrics from their cli more valuable than the treasure trove of prompt data that passes through to them either way that justifies this PR?
Yes. The only reason they subsidise all-you-can-prompt subscriptions is to collect additional data / signals. They can use those signals to further improve their models.
Because the ToS explicitly says the -p flag is fine, but the Agent SDK is not.
I assume that -p is the same that "codex exec".
The difference is that in this case the agent loop is executed, which has all the caching and behaviour guarantees. What I assume OpenClaw is doing is calling the endpoint directly while retaining its own "agent logic" so it doesn't follow whatever conventions is the backend expecting.
How important is that difference, I can't say, but aside the cost factor I assume Google doesn't want to subsidize agents that aren't theirs and in some way "the competition".