Claude Capacity Crunch / Opus Outages
activeOrigin: Anthropic, March–April 2026 (multiple incidents)
Multiple Opus 4.6 outages and session limit tightenings in March–April 2026. Caused partly by mass migration from ChatGPT after Pentagon deal (#QuitGPT). Anthropic 'quietly tightened' 5-hour session behavior and usage limits in late March 2026. Claude Code quotas ran out for many developers. The Register covered it multiple times.
Usage
Signifies: demand for Anthropic exceeded infrastructure. Also: 'you can't actually use the best model consistently' — a real friction point for production teams.
Mutations & variants
'Claude is down again' — developer frustration shorthand
'API-first fallback' — teams routing around the direct UI to avoid limits
Cross-platform escapes
- The Register: 'Anthropic admits Claude Code quotas running out too fast' (Mar 31)
- The Register: 'Anthropic tweaks usage limits to manage capacity' (Mar 26)
Shelf life: Active — Anthropic's infrastructure-vs-demand race continues
The irony: Anthropic's biggest PR win (#QuitGPT → people switching to Claude) caused its biggest operational crisis. This is useful when discussing AI infrastructure reality vs. hype.