Overview
- Anthropic, which began enforcing the change Saturday at 3 p.m. ET, stopped letting Claude subscription limits cover third‑party harnesses such as OpenClaw.
- Users can still connect these tools by buying discounted extra‑usage bundles or by switching to a Claude API key, and Anthropic is offering a one‑time credit equal to the monthly plan price plus a link for full refunds.
- The company said third‑party agent tools drive heavy, continuous requests that its consumer plans were not built to support, and it framed the shift as needed to protect capacity for official products and API users.
- Anthropic said the rule starts with OpenClaw but will extend to other third‑party harnesses, signaling a broader enforcement of earlier terms and developer guidance.
- Developers and power users voiced frustration over higher costs and possible workflow changes, and some are evaluating other models or local setups as agent workloads now incur pay‑as‑you‑go charges.