“We noticed a lot of ‘official clients’ were actually just three open-source scripts in a raincoat,” said Marcus Chen, VP of Digital Bouncers. Anthropic recently blocked outside apps from pretending to be the official Claude tool to save money. “Safety is our top priority. We must protect our users from the dangers of paying less than full market rate for their code generation.”

The new security measures are strict. “The process is very simple now,” explained Elena Rodriguez, Director of Wallet Inspection. “To prove you are not a spoofing tool, you just need to upload a notarized photo of your credit card and promise you are not trying to save money.” The crackdown has caused chaos for developers. One coder was seen sweating profusely while trying to teach his laptop to speak with a fancy British accent so it would sound more like the official Claude app.

At press time, Anthropic installed a velvet rope around the login button and started charging five dollars for coat check.

Inspired by the real story: Anthropic implemented strict safeguards to stop third-party apps from spoofing its official client to access cheaper pricing. Read the full story.