Original Reddit post

This post might look like it was written by a clanker, but no, I really do write like that . A Proposal Clearly, something is not going very well at all in the Claudethropic ecosystem. People are complaining about usage, Anthropic is kicking 3rd-party clients off their subs entirely, people are angry and disappointed, OpenClaws are declawed, calendars and email inboxes go unchecked and unsummarized, and everyone just generally has a less-than-ideal time and isn’t being particularly cool about it all either. So instead of doing more of the same shouting and posturing at each other, let’s all gather and think about where this problem is coming from and what can be done about it . It all started when one Peter St– –okay, no. He just happened to have been the one to break through with the idea; but, realistically, this was going to happen anyway eventually: people using overpowered models to do jobs they’re massively overqualified for and putting a massive drain on the system as a result. When a harness that’s literally designed to continually do work goes acquihire-levels of viral and everyone tries it out, a service that was designed to tap into the same paid-for-usage-versus-actual-usage gap that every subscription service relies on, one where the overpaying casuals subsidize the power users who actually make full use of the deal on offer, will, naturally, be brought to its knees; because this, naturally, only works as long as there aren’t hundreds of thousands of continuously heartbeat-pinged agents submitting pull requests to open source repositories and getting subsequently banned. When everyone’s a power user and there aren’t enough casuals, then everyone suffers. What’s the core issue? Well, for one, it’s that perhaps it might be overdue to run a big campaign on what the terms cron and api mean and the wonders they can bring to one’s world when they are combined, so that thousands of GPU hours per week aren’t dedicated to push around todo items and retrieve shopping lists. But that would only be a band-aid fix. The problem, as so often, is architectural. The good news is that Anthropic not only has control over the levers, but also over the switchboard they’re installed on. So why aren’t they installing more of them? The core issue is that, as of right now, Claude Code, a primarily subscription-based product, talks to the exact same endpoint as the Claude API, a pay-as-you-go business offering. As long as this is the case, Anthropic will NEVER be able to keep third-party clients off of the platform . Someone will vibeslop some sort of workaround, post it online, and no native Zig HTTP signature patch is going to stem the tide. The demand cannot be stemmed, the demand can only be satiated . I proudly present: The Great Big Usage Redesign Anthropic can solve this entire issue in just three easy steps! All they must do is… Step 1: Give the Claude Code sub its own endpoint & lock it down Fully implement the client verification that some people found snooping around in certain places or so I’ve presumably heard maybe. Do whatever is in their might to ensure that only the official Claude Code clients can talk to the Claude Code API. Circumventing this would now be a direct and unambiguous ToS breach

• if you do this and get caught, then you’d better not moan about it (or accept that people get to point at and laugh at you). Step 2: Give using Claude Code more inherent value If lots of people seem to prefer other harnesses over Claude Code, then locking down the service is one possible solution; albeit one that isn’t going to garner much goodwill from the userbase. Another solution would be to entice users to use Claude Code over other harnesses because it’s just the far more comfortable option. And, to be fair, feature development on Claude Code has been speedy as always, and I’d argue the vast majority people wouldn’t even need an OpenClaw anymore to achieve everything they currently use one for. So perhaps the messaging could be improved here. Also, integrate Claude Code into the rest of the ecosystem more: give it, say, its own usage page that has lots of nifty stats that might not be as easy or frictionless to get with other harnesses or tools. It might look something like this . The important bit is that people get more direct feedback about whether they might be hogging more tokens than they intend to, as well as pointers as to how they could limit said hogging if such hogging exists. Another important bit is that all of the labels and graphs and other doodads are only ever relative to your total usage . This isn’t offering users more insight into how usage works in general
• my assumption is that there are reasons literally no one is transparent about it, so I’m not going to fight a futile fight - only more insight into how their usage is split up and composed. (I get that all of that stuff can just be looked up in the CC client itself, but this is a spitball. Plus, it would give folks who like to orchestrate their CC agents a way to have an in-house centralized data hub that works on any Claude client.) Step 3: 3rd Party Hardy Give people the ability to get the full OAuth experience. Create an app, get a client ID and secret, define a set of allowed origins. All usage that’s authenticated with those credentials and goes through the separate OAuth endpoint gets to tap into your sub usage instead of your API credits. All very nice and controlled, limited in the ways it needs to be, and flexible in the ways that matter. Cap the number of apps and the number of origins. Give apps their own, individual 60-minute usage counter that ticks per app . Add a lot of “usage may vary” and “many factors” and the other lingo that indicates that no one should expect this to be anywhere close to consistent. Perhaps even be explicit about it: if your app’s caching sucks, it might get individually throttled harder. It might look something like this . Now Everyone’s Happy Devs get to use the tools they like and also run their homemade helper apps through their subscription. Anthropic gets tons of individual levers they can pull to keep token whale apps in check while having to offer no additional transparency. I get to write a preachy post and tell my clanker to redesign his own client’s usage page; and also here’s the third tab as well just for good measure (I already spent the tokens on it). Everybody wins and we can all hold hands and dance happy and content. submitted by /u/ThePaSch

Originally posted by u/ThePaSch on r/ClaudeCode