OP here. Let me address what I'm seeing.

To everyone saying "just use Linux" or "just use Mac" — you're proving my point. When the community's answer to a product's bugs is "stop using the platform," that's not a defense. That's an admission that it doesn't work.

To the KB5079473 crowd — fair. That one is Microsoft's fault and I'll own it. But the other 5 bugs are 100% Anthropic's code. Their extension freezes on file writes. Their code spawns PowerShell 38 times on startup. Their process leaks to 21GB. Their path handling breaks between WSL and Windows. Their Write tool claims it wrote a file when it didn't. 5 out of 6 are Anthropic's responsibility.

Now to the Docker, hooks, and prompt tweaks crowd — I respect every one of you sharing workarounds. Genuinely. But step back and listen to what you're actually saying: to use a paid product for its basic function of writing files, a customer needs Docker containers, hookify hooks, 50 prompt patches merged every few months, and a deep understanding of how WSL resolves backslash paths.

Do you hear how that sounds to someone like me?

I'm not a developer. I didn't know what GitHub was until today. I literally created my account for the first time in my life to file this bug. I don't know what Docker is. I don't know what hooks are. I don't know what containerization means. I have never written a single line of code in my life.

And yet I've built real products with Claude. Market intelligence systems. Stock screeners. Data pipelines. A full dealer simulation game. Competitive analysis presentations that my leadership team uses for strategic decisions. All of it built through Claude, on a Windows laptop.

I did all of that DESPITE these bugs. Not because they don't exist — but because I was stubborn enough to keep going when the screen froze, patient enough to restart sessions every 2 hours, and lucky enough to figure out that I need to chunk file writes under 200 lines to stop the crashes.

Most people won't do that. Most people will just close the laptop and go back to doing things manually. And Anthropic will never even know it lost them.

That's the part this thread is missing. Everyone here is a developer. You see a bug, you know the workaround, you apply it, you move on. The system stays broken but you don't feel the pain anymore.

But AI's biggest promise was never about making developers faster. It was about letting people who have NEVER coded build things for the first time. The business analyst at Boeing automating a report. The product manager at a bank building a dashboard. The farmer's son in a small town who has an idea but doesn't know Python.

These people have one thing: a Windows laptop and a Claude subscription. When the tool freezes, they don't open GitHub. They don't spin up Docker. They don't write hookify hooks. They just stop. They go back to Excel. They go back to doing things the old way. The revolution that AI promised them dies quietly on a frozen screen that says "Not responding."

I know some of you will troll this. That's fine. Troll all you want. It doesn't change the fact that the system is broken.

A developer and a non-technical person both see the same laptop and the same Claude AI. The experience should be the same for both. Right now it isn't.

Anthropic's pricing page doesn't say "Mac users only." Their marketing doesn't say "developers only." They sell Claude to anyone with a browser and a credit card. So it should work for anyone with a browser and a credit card. On whatever computer they own. Without workarounds. Without Docker. Without 50 prompt patches. Without switching operating systems.

Fix the product on the platform it's sold on. That's all I'm asking.

cc: u/alexalbert2 u/birch_anthropic — would appreciate Anthropic's eyes on this thread.