Anthropic introduces Claude Code weekly rate limits, claims under 5% of users affected
Anthropic announced weekly caps on Claude Code usage. The claim that fewer than 5% were affected was widely disputed; the HN thread hit 609 points and 705 comments.
What changed
before— removed
Practical effective cap measured in daily heavy use
after+ current
Hard weekly caps, opaque calculation
word-level diff
HardPractical weeklyeffective caps,cap opaquemeasured calculationin daily heavy use
Context
On July 28, 2025 Anthropic introduced weekly rate limits on Claude Code, framing the change as protecting fewer than 5% of users. The community response was overwhelmingly skeptical -- heavy daily users reported being throttled within hours, and the HN front-page thread became one of the most-commented AI-tooling stories of the year. This event was foundational to the AI shrinkflation narrative.