Claude didn't break at the model this time, it broke at login. From 14:00, claude.ai, the API, Claude Code and Cowork all threw errors. A first mitigation at 14:36 brought error rates down, but single sign-on, Sign in with Apple, starting new chats, voice, purchases and file uploads still failed, and things only mostly recovered at 14:59.
The line that matters is "if you're signed in, please don't sign out." That says the fault sat in the identity layer, not the inference layer — the model could still run, users just couldn't get in. Messages sent between 14:00 and 14:59 may not have been saved, and the status page never gave a root cause. An hour of full-stack downtime is a real problem for anyone who treats Claude Code as a daily tool.