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.
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.
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.
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...)
Sounds like you're thinking of scraping the raw terminal output. Consider using a terminal library (pyte[0] comes to mind) for interaction and processing the session files for tool use data, etc.
These Twitter/X links are killing me, especially when they don't work with XCancel which seems to be happening more frequently. This one just gave me a summary by Grok, and I have no idea now if I'm seeing the same thing that others are commenting on.
It's really important to note that the programmatic vs. interactive framing is a little misleading. For example, if you're using some IDE integrations, that is still interactive, that is still the same usage pattern as using it in the Claude Code CLI. BUT with these new rules, it'll count against this special "programmatic" usage.
Considering what kind of fuckups happened up until now everytime Anthropic vibe codes a horrible anti-automation "fix" (like billing extra usage just because the string "hermes" exists somewhere in the prompt), this will get funny/horrible really fast. After all, you can very easily script tmux to use Claude Code "interactively".
What crazy shenanigans are gonna happen? Are people that type too fast, or people that copy paste too much, or people that output to markdown/json too often going to wake up to a 800$ extra usage bill or a banned account?
24 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 35.4 ms ] threadIf 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.
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.
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.
This is a nothing burger.
$200 of on-demand usage credits is much, much, much less than what they were getting with $200 subscription.
Maybe "good," maybe "bad," but definitely, definitely not a nothing burger.
But inevitably, this will end, ultimately making AI a bit less accessible for consumers.
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...)
> Tradeoffs [...]
Sounds like you're thinking of scraping the raw terminal output. Consider using a terminal library (pyte[0] comes to mind) for interaction and processing the session files for tool use data, etc.
[0] https://pyte.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Considering what kind of fuckups happened up until now everytime Anthropic vibe codes a horrible anti-automation "fix" (like billing extra usage just because the string "hermes" exists somewhere in the prompt), this will get funny/horrible really fast. After all, you can very easily script tmux to use Claude Code "interactively".
What crazy shenanigans are gonna happen? Are people that type too fast, or people that copy paste too much, or people that output to markdown/json too often going to wake up to a 800$ extra usage bill or a banned account?