Overview
- Anthropic, which began enforcing the rule Saturday at 12 p.m. PT, now blocks third‑party “harnesses” from drawing on Claude subscription limits and requires extra‑usage bundles or a Claude API key.
- Subscribers get a one‑time credit equal to their monthly plan, discounted overage bundles are available, and an email link offers the option to request a full refund.
- Anthropic says third‑party tools place an outsized strain on its systems and that flat consumer plans were not built for machine‑paced agent traffic, with the policy set to roll out beyond OpenClaw.
- Heavy agent workloads that once ran under a $20–$200 monthly plan will now incur pay‑as‑you‑go charges at API rates, which users and reports say can reach hundreds or thousands of dollars for sustained runs.
- OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger criticized the timing and said he and board member Dave Morin tried to delay the move, while many developers are weighing API‑based designs, caching, and rival models as alternatives.