Yes, which I understand, but I think they’re crippling their product for users this way.

I don’t think it’s just this, because the thinking tokens often reveal more about Anthropic’s inner workings. For example, it’s how the whole existence of Claude’s soul document was reverse engineered, it often leaks details about “system reminders” (eg long conversation reminders).

I think it’s also just very convenient for Anthropic to do this. The fact that they’re also presenting this as a “performance optimization” suggests they’re not giving the real reason they do this.