Session limits tightened
Anthropic shortened Claude session lengths during peak hours (weekdays 5am–11am PT / 1pm–7pm GMT) while keeping weekly limits unchanged — the company warned about ~7% of Pro users hitting caps sooner (x.com). The announcement provoked backlash and bug reports: users reported apparent 100% usage after 1–3 prompts and silent Opus→Sonnet switches inside the Claude Code VS Code extension (x.com)(x.com).
Anthropic’s change was posted publicly by an engineer on the company’s X account rather than via a corporate blog or status-page incident report. (theregister.com ) (theregister.com) The social post that triggered complaints appeared in late March 2026 and was picked up by multiple tech outlets within 24 hours. (piunikaweb.com ) (piunikaweb.com) Developers have filed reproducible bug reports on the Claude Code GitHub repo showing the VS Code extension defaulting from Opus to Sonnet and ignoring environment model settings; one long-running issue with examples is #14973 (filed Dec 21, 2025). (github.com ) (github.com) A separate GitHub complaint demonstrates the extension ignoring ANTHROPIC_MODEL despite the variable being present, which correlates with multiple user reports of unexpected model switches inside the IDE. (github.com ) (github.com) Reporting from MacRumors and Forbes documents developers seeing their Claude Code usage allotments drop by large percentages within minutes and calling the behaviour a “rapid rate-limit drain,” with users sharing example screenshots and transaction timings. (macrumors.com ) (macrumors.com) Anthropic has previously adjusted Claude’s limits once before — introducing weekly caps in August 2025 and publishing plan-by-plan estimates of expected hours for Pro and Max subscribers — and it ran a separate short-term off‑peak double‑limits promotion in mid‑March 2026. (techcrunch.com ) (techcrunch.com) Anthropic’s own Claude Code docs note that model aliases (e.g., sonnet, opus) resolve to the latest model version and can cause silent switches when versions change, a design detail developers cite when diagnosing the IDE behaviour. (code.claude.com ) (code.claude.com)
