AI Guides › Playbooks
By Nigel Guy · 8 min read
Most maintainers decide whether to apply for free Claude Max by skimming a social post, remembering a star count, and either giving up or firing off a one-line form. Both fail for the same reason: the thresholds in circulation are not the ones on Anthropic's own pages, and the form is read for substance, not volume. The offer is real, but it is a discretionary programme with a rulebook, and you should read the rulebook before you spend ten minutes on the form.
The rule: check your own numbers against the official criteria and the general requirements first, then write the application around the one criterion you can prove with a public link.
Claude for Open Source gives eligible open-source maintainers and contributors six months of Claude Max 20x at no charge. Max 20x is the top individual tier: Anthropic's help centre lists it at $200 a month (about £150 at time of writing; check the £ price at checkout, as it varies with exchange rate and tax), so the benefit is worth roughly $1,200 over six months (about £900 at time of writing). It includes Claude Code. Anthropic's terms cap the programme at 10,000 approved recipients unless it raises the cap, and say applications close whenever Anthropic decides. There is no published deadline, so treat it as something that can end without notice.
Work through this ledger in order. Each row is a pass or fail you can evidence with a link. You need to pass at least one row in Part A and every row in Part B.
The current application page lists five groups. The terms document lists the same thresholds in one "Maintainer Track" and adds a discretionary route.
| # | Criterion | What to look up | Where to prove it |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | You maintain packages others build on: 500 or more dependent repos, or 100 or more dependent packages, or 200,000 or more monthly downloads combined across registries | Dependents count; registry download figures | GitHub dependency graph; npm, PyPI, crates.io, RubyGems or similar |
| A2 | You are a listed committer or maintainer on a recognised foundation or language project (the page names CPython, Rust team, Node.js TSC, Apache PMC, CNCF, Kubernetes, Linux kernel, Django, Rails, "or similar") | Your listing | The project's own maintainers or committers page |
| A3 | You authored 100 or more pull requests merged into repos you do not own, in the last 12 months | Count of merged PRs in others' repos | GitHub PR search filtered to your handle and to merged |
| A4 | One of your repos had 20 or more unique external contributors with merged PRs, in the last 12 months | Distinct contributors, excluding you | The repo's contributors and merged-PR history |
| A5 | A repo you maintain has an OpenSSF criticality score of 0.4 or higher | The score | OpenSSF Criticality Score tooling |
One wrinkle: the terms say you aggregate across projects you maintain for A1, and the 12-month windows count back from the day you apply, not from today's date in this guide.
These come from section 2.3 of the terms.
| # | Requirement | Check |
|---|---|---|
| B1 | You are a natural person, not a company | Apply as yourself |
| B2 | You are 18 or over, or of age of majority where you live | Check |
| B3 | You live somewhere Claude.ai is offered and are not subject to US export-control or sanctions restrictions | UK residents are fine on the supported-location test, but read the terms yourself |
| B4 | Your GitHub account is in good standing and at least two years old | Profile "joined" date |
| B5 | You have public contribution activity (commits, PRs, reviews or releases) in the 90 days before you apply | Contribution graph |
| B6 | You maintain or contribute to a project under an OSI-approved licence (MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD, GPL and so on) | Licence file |
| B7 | You are not an Anthropic employee, contractor or agent, or their household member | Self-evident |
If you fail a Part B row, stop. Meeting Part A does not rescue you.
If you fail Part A but maintain something the ecosystem quietly depends on, the terms provide an "Ecosystem Impact Track". You write a short explanation of the project's significance, and Anthropic weighs downstream dependents, breadth of use, how critical the function is, and your role. This is a judgement call, not a threshold.
Imagine a maintainer called Sam who runs a small Python parsing library. Sam's gut says "I only have 800 stars, so no." The ledger says something different.
Sam's best evidence is the download figure, so the application leads with it, links the registry page, and says what breaks downstream if the library goes unmaintained. Sam does not mention stars at all. The numbers here are invented to show the method; yours will differ.
The trap is working from a remembered threshold. Early third-party write-ups and social posts described the offer in terms of 5,000 or more GitHub stars or 1 million or more monthly npm downloads. I could not find those figures on Anthropic's current application page or terms, which use the five groups above, so I treat them as stale or inaccurate. Check the live page, not a screenshot of someone's post.
Three further traps sit in the terms:
The form on the Claude for Open Source page asks for first and last name, an email (use your account email if you already have one), your GitHub handle and sign-in, a repository URL, a description of the project's reach and impact, and how you will use the subscription. The terms add a limit of 500 words for the "why you qualify" explanation and say they send the activation link to the email on your GitHub account. The terms also point to claude.com/open-source-max as the application address; the programme page I verified is claude.com/contact-sales/claude-for-oss, so start there and from the official terms link.
Here is a prompt to draft the two free-text answers. Fill in the square brackets with your own evidence.
You are an editor helping an open-source maintainer write two short answers for a free-subscription application. Be plain and factual. Do not flatter, and do not invent numbers.
Inputs:
- Project name and link: [PROJECT_AND_URL]
- Which eligibility criterion I meet and my figure: [CRITERION_AND_NUMBER]
- Where the figure can be checked publicly: [PUBLIC_LINKS]
- Who depends on the project, and what breaks if it is neglected: [DOWNSTREAM_IMPACT]
- My role and recent activity (last 90 days): [MY_ROLE_AND_ACTIVITY]
- How I would use the subscription on this project: [INTENDED_USE]
Task:
1. Write answer one, "project reach and impact", in 150 to 250 words. Lead with the strongest verifiable figure, then the downstream impact, then my role.
2. Write answer two, "how I will use the subscription", in 80 to 150 words. Name specific maintenance tasks, such as triage, test writing, reviews or docs.
3. Keep every claim traceable to the inputs above.
Rules:
- If any input is missing or vague, ask me for it before writing.
- Do not mention stars unless I gave them and they support the criterion.
- No superlatives, no marketing language.
Self-check before answering: list each number you used and the input it came from. Remove any that you cannot match.