The product genuinely earned it — Claude Opus 4.6 is remarkable and the points about coding accuracy are accurate.

One thing the new subscribers discovering Claude this week should know: the company had a rough period with its paying community that the product quality alone can't paper over. While paying subscribers tripled, some of the most committed early users — $2,600/year Claude Max subscribers — are quietly documenting why they cancelled.

The pattern: C&D against OpenClaw (the largest developer community built on Claude), a $16M crypto scam using Anthropic's name that ran for 6 months while they did nothing, and the dropped RSP safety pledge. Not about the model — about the company behind it.

For your DevOps and developer audience thinking about building on Claude: the full account of what happened to the developer community that built on it in good faith: aiwithapexcom.substack.…

"Whether the top spot holds... remains to be seen." Exactly the question.