It’s probably a mixture of things including direct control over how the api is called and used as pointed out above and giving a discount for using their ecosystem. They are in fact a business so it should not surprise anyone they act as one.
replyIt might well be a mixture, but 95% of that mixture is vendor lock in. Same reason they don't support AGENTS.md, they want to add friction in switching.
replyThey can try add as much as friction they want. A simple rename in the files and directories like .claude makes the thing work to move out of CC.
replyIt’s not like moving from android to iOS.
You'd be surprised how effective small bits of friction are.
replyIf it was lock in they wouldn't make it absolutely trivial to change inference providers in Claude Code.
replyIt's very straightforward to instrument CC under tmux with send-keys and capturep. You could easily use that for distillation, IMO. There are also detailed I/O logs.
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