OpenClaw Puts Claude CLI Reuse Back on the Table, and HN Wants Clearer Anthropic Policy

The Hacker News thread around OpenClaw's Anthropic provider page looked like a small compatibility update at first. The documentation says OpenClaw supports both Anthropic API keys and Claude CLI reuse. It also says Anthropic staff told the project that OpenClaw-style Claude CLI usage is allowed again, so OpenClaw is treating Claude CLI reuse and claude -p usage as sanctioned unless Anthropic publishes a new policy.

The comments were not convinced that the issue is settled. An OpenClaw maintainer explained that the project took public guidance seriously and adjusted its defaults for CLI usage, but still sees behavior that does not fully match that guidance, including blocked parts of the system prompt. Other HN readers pointed to the broader problem: Anthropic statements across social posts, docs, product limits, and runtime behavior can feel inconsistent enough that developers do not know where they stand.

The OpenClaw page itself keeps a cautious tone. For long-lived gateway hosts or explicit server-side billing control, it says Anthropic API keys remain the clearest production path. At the same time, if Claude CLI is already logged in on a host, OpenClaw can reuse that login. That dual path is exactly what makes the integration useful and risky. Teams want the convenience of local CLI authentication, but a background agent gateway is not the same usage pattern as a person typing into a terminal.

That is why the HN discussion matters beyond OpenClaw. The coding agent ecosystem now mixes personal subscriptions, CLI tokens, OAuth flows, API keys, and gateway proxies that all point at similar model families but carry different rules. Once agents can run tools, cache prompts, call subagents, and operate for long periods, the line between interactive use and production automation becomes a real product-policy surface.

The sources are the OpenClaw Anthropic docs and the HN discussion. The community's main point is not just whether one integration is allowed today. It is that provider policy needs to be legible enough for developers to build around without treating every CLI workflow as a temporary exception.