March 11, 2026
When your AI calls in sick
Ask HN: Is Claude Down Again?
Logins broken, status said “all good,” devs meltdown
TLDR: Claude’s login tools stumbled while the company posted an incident saying some users couldn’t access the site, though the underlying API kept running. Commenters split between jokes about forgetting how to code without AI, worries about growing outages, and demands for make-goods—highlighting how dependent work has become on these tools.
Hacker News lit up after users started getting lockouts and “401” errors trying to log into Claude, the buzzy AI assistant many devs now lean on for coding. The official status page stayed green for a beat, then flipped to an incident: Claude.ai and Claude Code logins were glitchy; some users saw slowness; the API (the plumbing other apps use) wasn’t affected. Translation: lots of folks couldn’t get in, and the vibe turned spicy.
The crowd split fast. One camp roasted the “AI-eats-software” hype: “coding is solved” jokes flew while people begged their memories to recall how to code without a bot. Another group shrugged and made it lunch break time: “I’ll just drink tea and collect a paycheck.” Meanwhile, reliability doomers argued platform stability “has nosedived,” while calmer voices blamed “observability bias”—we notice long outages more than quick blips.
Amid the chaos came FAQs with edge: Will subscriptions be extended for lost time? Why do outages last hours, not minutes? Are companies “dogfooding” (using their own tools) into downtime? And yes, the memes cooked: “sudo make me a sandwich,” “prompt your kitchen,” and a throwback to copy-pasting from that Q&A site we all swore off.
The mood? Half standup comedy, half standdown productivity. When AI’s the co‑pilot and it stalls on takeoff, the whole cockpit argues about who’s actually flying. Updates are rolling; the drama’s already airborne.
Key Points
- •Users reported 401 errors and OAuth session restoration issues when accessing Claude.
- •The Claude status page initially showed all systems operational before an official incident was posted.
- •The official incident stated issues with Claude Code and Claude.ai, including login failures and slow performance.
- •The Claude API was reported as not affected by the incident.
- •Status page updates indicated active investigation into the service disruption.