There’s the argument that Anthropic has built Claude Code to use the models efficiently, which the subscription pricing is based on.

Maybe there’s some truth to that, but then why haven’t OpenAI made the same move? I believe the main reason is platform control. Anthropic can’t survive as a pipeline for tokens, they need to build and control a platform, which means aggressively locking out everybody else building a platform.

I want to differentiate 2 kinds of harnesses

1. openclaw like - using the LLM endpoint on subscription billing, different prompts than claude code

2. using claude cli with -p, in headless mode

The second runs through their code and prompts, just calls claude in non-interactive mode for subtasks. I feel especially put off by restricting the second kind. I need it to run judge agents to review plans and code.

Note that the thing that's banned is using third party harnesses with their subscription based pricing.

If you're paying normal API prices they'll happily let you use whatever harness you want.

One thing is lack of control of token efficiency on what’s already a subsidised product.

Another thing is branding: Their CLI might be the best right now, but tech debt says it won’t continue to be for very long.

By enforcing the CLI you enforce the brand value — you’re not just buying the engine.

To be clear they weren’t banned from Claude usage, they were required to use the API and API rates rather than Claude Max tokens.

Claude code uses a bunch if best practices to maximize cache hit rate. Third party harnesses are hit or miss, so often use a lot more tokens for the same task.