Claude subscription changes coverage of `claude -p`

ramoz

The wording in the press is very confusing. Not sure if deliberate. If you're an active `claude -p` user, it will now cost you API rates vs being able to user your subscription. UPDATE: https://x.com/lydiahallie/status/2054650920768807313?s=20 Still confused.

throawayonthe

hahahahahahaha

paulddraper

Title is misleading. (EDIT: Has been updated) https://x.com/ClaudeDevs/status/2054610152817619388 You can claim a monthly credit that covers programmatic (`claude -p`, etc) usage. So a Claude subscription does cover it, but at a lesser amount.

puglr

It's a bit disheartening that this is generating so little discussion (this thread seems to be the one with the most comments, currently at 8). 99% of my max plan usage is non-interactive, and this post-June 15 pricing will far, far exceed what I can afford. I assume this applies to a great deal of us.

solenoid0937

Before the doomers come in, you get $200 in API credits every month for claude -p usage. Usage counts against those API credits. This is a nothing burger.

luckystarr

So what does that mean? Claude within ACP within my editor is billed differently than Claude via CLI?

gcr

A better link: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/15036540-use-the-clau...

ed_mercer

I guess Openclaw can update their docs once again.

alyxya

This could end up becoming a cat-and-mouse game where users programmatically try to turn their non-interactive usage of Claude Code to appear interactive and Anthropic tries to detect and charge that under API pricing. I don't know if there's a proper solution here because there will always be borderline use cases like using Claude Code on a cloud VM, where it would be nicer to interactively do work through sending and receiving messages on a custom frontend rather than SSHing and using the CLI.

bluesnowmonkey

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48126438

melonamin

I wonder how this cat-and-mouse game will end. I've been using my own wrapper around Claude CLI that overcomes some 'claude -p' limitations, and now I have even more reasons to. But inevitably, this will end, ultimately making AI a bit less accessible for consumers.

2001zhaozhao

I mostly get this change from their side except for the extremely misleading framing. I think in response to this change, I might write an open-source Claude Code GUI wrapper to wrap over the TUI and allow accessing it from a GUI interface. Still interactive (conforms to spirit of Anthropic's new rule), and runs Claude Code via the actual CLI (conforms to letter of Anthropic's rule), without even using the JSON output flag. It would just read the outputs directly from the terminal like a user would, and then translates the user's actions directly into actions to the Claude Code TUI. Tradeoffs: the thinking blocks are lost, and file changes from edit tools might have to be reconstructed after-the-fact using VCS commands because the TUI doesn't display them when accept-edits mode is enabled. Requires underlying terminal to have a giant width/height in order to reliably capture the outputs by reading the terminal alone. Interactive tools like AskUserQuestion will need to work via detecting that such a prompt is open and exposing the original CLI interface to the user temporarily. But overall it seems like it could give users most of the benefits of an interactive GUI interface (scrollable history, much higher info density, easy to copy text, browse features with mouse) while staying compliant with Anthropic's new rules both in letter and spirit. You can then build a worktree manager or whatever above this agent GUI layer. This way us interactive users can have our good tools back (and leverage the new claude -p credit for occasional automation features) while the people who are actually abusing the plan with 24/7 dark factories or openclaw are still locked out. (the only way Anthropic would not agree to this is if they had the ulterior motive of lock-in in mind...)

zitoshi

i don't quite understand the change. Does it impact purely claude code users?

chatmasta

In other news, tmux send-keys is still free.