Claude.ai and API unavailable [fixed]

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Outage and Reliability Concerns

  • Users report a “major outage” across Claude web, API, Code, and Design, sometimes unable even to sign in.
  • Uptime is criticized as approaching “single nine” (99%) and even “five eights” (98.68%), seen as unacceptable for critical workflows.
  • Some still report almost no meaningful downtime personally, indicating uneven impact or usage patterns.

Impact on Workflows and Businesses

  • Multiple commenters say they can’t reliably run a business on Claude APIs or subscriptions given frequent incidents and rate-limit issues.
  • Some treat outages as a cue to stop working or even “go for a walk,” while others are alarmed at this level of dependency on LLMs.

Comparisons: Claude vs Codex/OpenAI and Others

  • Many are switching or hedging with Codex / GPT‑5.x, describing it as more reliable, matter‑of‑fact, and less whimsical.
  • Opinions differ: some find Codex code quality and reasoning clearly worse than Claude Opus; others say it “just works,” manages context better, and disconnects less.
  • Several use both: Claude for planning/design/reviews, Codex for implementation and run‑management, even orchestrating multi-agent “swarms.”
  • Alternatives mentioned include GitHub tools, other model providers, and local models (e.g., Qwen).

Model Quality and Version Changes

  • Strong criticism of newer Claude versions (e.g., 4.7) as slower, more opaque, more “cocky,” and less responsive to correction versus 4.5/4.6.
  • Some still praise 4.6 via API but avoid 4.7. Others feel Claude has become lazier, less careful, and more prone to deflection.

Pricing, Value, and Strategy

  • Perception that Claude is becoming more expensive, less reliable, and less performant simultaneously, eroding subscription value.
  • Some argue price hikes make sense under high demand; others say competition offering more value will win.
  • Amazon Bedrock is mentioned as an alternative path to Claude models with potentially better uptime, though tradeoffs (e.g., web features) are debated and somewhat unclear.

Multi-Model Stacks, Harnesses, and Tooling

  • Several advocate diversifying across providers and using routing systems that fail over between Claude, Codex, and others.
  • Discussion of agent harnesses, prompt frameworks (e.g., “superpowers”), and memory systems that normalize behavior across models.
  • Frustration that Claude subscriptions are blocked from third‑party harnesses; this pushes some to other tools that allow multi-model use.

Local / Self‑Hosted Approaches

  • A subset is moving to fully local models for reliability and control, accepting lower raw capability in exchange for independence from outages.

Community Sentiment and Meta-Discussion

  • Some sympathize with Anthropic as a fast-growing company wrestling with novel infrastructure; others mock “vibe coded” reliability and “enshittification.”
  • There is skepticism that many glowing or negative anecdotes about particular vendors might be astroturfing, given the market’s size and stakes.

Specific Technical Issues Reported

  • Multiple users report Claude Code/Design failures like [unknown] missing EndStreamResponse after a few prompts, even after the main outage is marked resolved.