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The Great Claude Token Heist: How Anthropic's "Holiday Gift" Became a Bait-and-Switch Nightmare

"This feels like I've been bait and switched TWICE now." — Claude Max subscriber, January 2026

What Anthropic Did:

Run these steps on the OpenClaw host to give the bot free, unlimited web search (no API key needed).

mkdir -p /opt/searxng
SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
cat &gt; /opt/searxng/settings.yml &lt;&lt; EOF

	#!/usr/bin/env bash
	set -euo pipefail

	# patch-claude-code.sh — Rebalance Claude Code prompts to fix corner-cutting behavior
	#
	# What this does:
	# Patches the npm-installed @anthropic-ai/claude-code cli.js to rebalance
	# system prompt instructions that cause the model to cut corners, simplify
	# excessively, and defer complicated work.
	#