I’ve had Claude Code for about four months. In my second month, I was so enthralled by the prospects that I was regularly bumping into the weekly cap, and I picked up a second subscription for use with a different set of projects (web projects, Raspberry Pi projects, etc.) During this time, my main complaint was not usage caps, which were fine and fair at $200/mo. My main complaint was not quality - whenever Claude stopped following instructions, I reviewed and revised my app framework, and compliance was restored. My main complaint was Claude for Mac. Over the course of my four months of use, Claude for Mac went from being mostly-okay to a bug-ridden, unusable mess: Problem #1: Session frequently stopped responding mid-query-response Any normal mid-processing prompt - “let me read the file now,” or “I have all the information I need and I’m developing a plan,” or “I’m proceeding with the audit” - might be followed by absolutely nothing. Maybe the session reports “Thinking…” forever, or maybe the “Thinking…” prompts just stop happening. Either way, I could wait forever - overnight, etc. - and I never got a response unless I nudged it. When I did nudge it (“Are you still processing my request?”), it started responding again with a lame excuse like “I was just finishing reading the file” or “I am just starting the audit now” - without acknowledging that it had fallen asleep. Sometimes this behavior appeared to occur when the session runs a tool call or sub-agent that failed, and the session continues waiting (forever) for it to complete gracefully. Sometimes, this behavior occurred multiple times per session. Often, the agent reported that it had completed processing and was just sitting idle. Very often, the agent referred to output - “I provided my report above,” or “I asked you a question and was waiting for your response” - that did not appear in the chat. And sometimes… Problem #2: Sessions just stop responding at all Sessions just spontaneously died for no apparent reason. You could keep sending them messages and it would never ever respond to you again. Or, all responses would yield HTTP 500 or another message. This wasn’t about context. Yes, I learned early on to keep an eye on my context; yes, I learned a hard lesson of “Message prompt too long” when I didn’t manage it well. This isn’t that. This occurred sometimes on almost brand-new sessions, with sessions under 20% context window usage, etc. There was never any rhyme or reason to it. Problem #3: Messages appear out of order… and sometimes vanish Frequently, sessions rendered their messages out of chronological order. This occurred most often with interrupt user messages - e.g., if you enter message #1 and then message #2 while Claude was processing message #1, the Claude chat continuously inserted message #2 at the very end of the session, after other messages that came later. Often, if you enter a message to Claude asking for status, Claude for Mac retroactively inserts output from Claude above your message . Sometimes, if you enter a message to Claude and then switch to another session, when you return to the main session, your message is gone. None of these problems made a lick of sense, and the only way to untangle all of it was to abandon the session and start a new one. I submitted help requests for all of these problems. I never received a response. I posted on GitHub with explanations and evidence. My posts were closed without action. I reached a point where I could not get work done with Claude Code because Claude for Mac was so infuriatingly buggy and crippled. So, I spent a few weeks and a ton of tokens creating my own alternative to Claude for Mac. It looks the same, it works the same (only without the bugs), and it has no “automation” features - every prompt was triggered by my typing or a manual action. And yet… Anthropic just announced a ban on all “third-party harnesses” for subscription accounts. Presumably, that includes the harness that I wrote for myself using Claude Code. I’m done. I’m just done. I refuse to pay Anthropic for the privilege of struggling to use their atrocious, amateurish, workflow-breaking toy of a UI to access their $200/mo service. I canceled both of my Max accounts and I am transferring all of my projects to Codex. The chat tool that I wrote for Claude works just as well with Codex, so that’s what I’m using from now on. I won’t be going back to Anthropic. Not even if they fix their shit. This is not how you treat customers. submitted by /u/reddit_is_kayfabe
Originally posted by u/reddit_is_kayfabe on r/ClaudeCode
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