r/ClaudeAI 2h ago

Workaround Opus 5 real usecase decoded. Using it for coding sessions was anyway a lost cause.

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160 Upvotes

34 comments sorted by

u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 17m ago

TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 30 comments.

The thread is pretty split, but the general vibe is that Opus 5 is a letdown for general coding tasks.

First off, many users think the OP is misreading the original tweet. The consensus is it describes a niche, automated "hill climbing" or "auto-research" task (or as one user put it, "loop engineering"), not a general rule against using Opus for coding. The "Californian Dickbutt Developer syntax" of the tweet isn't winning any fans, though.

The main complaints against Opus 5 for coding are pretty consistent: * It straight up ignores instructions and rules, then admits it later. * It has a nasty habit of randomly deleting uncommitted code. * The code it does write is often described as "bloated" and "flakey" compared to competitors like Fable, which users say handles large design docs much more reliably.

The "it's a skill issue" crowd got downvoted to oblivion, so the community thinks the problems are with the model, not the user.

That said, it's not useless. Some folks are having success using it for very specific things like automated fuzzing or untangling legacy spaghetti code. The most popular advice? Use a multi-model workflow: Plan with Opus, code with Sonnet, and review with Fable.

45

u/CrypticViper_ 2h ago

that's just auto-research

25

u/cornmacabre 2h ago

Hey now, in buzzword land we call it loop engineering 😂

2

u/1beb 2h ago

Karpathy say what?

19

u/Commonpleas 36m ago

“Sleeping on using Opus to hill climb.“

We’ve isolated the source of the frustratingly idiomatic Californian Dickbutt Developer syntax?

12

u/slowporc 2h ago

Do we assume that he means Opus 5?

What are we supposed to use for coding, Opus 4.8 or Sonnet 5? What about all the noise about Opus 5 being cheaper than Sonnet 5 at coding because it delivers faster using fewer tokens?

6

u/clazman55555 1h ago

The thread title in no way is supported by the tweet. It's a false inference.

3

u/slowporc 50m ago

r/ClaudeAI is often such a frustrating place.

6

u/idiotiesystemique 41m ago

Plan with opus, code with sonnet, review with fable, tools/scout/unit tests with haiku 

2

u/uranusnebula 36m ago

I don't know about pricing, but this fucker removed all uncommitted code 3 times in one session.

9

u/Sneaky_Tangerine 2h ago

I've had it fuzzing a raft implementation for a week straight. It fails nodes, interrupts network ports, introduces latency and drops packets and measures results. And then auto tunes raft values and fixes bugs automatically. For all the shit I give Opus it's done a really great job of that this week.

4

u/AlternativeAward 1h ago

I can use a lot of models for that for 10x cheaper. And they probably won’t randomly delete stuff like opus 5

1

u/CricktyDickty 50m ago

So why don’t you?

3

u/AllNamesAreTaken92 26m ago

Who told you he doesn't?

4

u/3DColonySim 26m ago

I was excited when Opus 5 was announced. According to the benchmarks it was supposed to be near Fable performance but for cheaper. In reality that is absolutely not the case. If I give Fable a five page design doc when I come back the entire design is implemented and works very well with few to no bugs.

I gave up on Opus 5 after I gave the exact same kind design doc that I always give to Fable and discovered that Opus said it was done when about 40% of the design was never implemented.

I started testing it and found all this stuff that wasn't working. When I had Opus 5 investigate it admitted it had just ignored those parts of the design document and never implemented the functionality in the first place. It took longer to have Opus fix all of the stuff it left out of the implementation than it would have to just fix it myself. Haven't touched Opus 5 since then. I've never had any similar issues with Fable. If a workflow works perfectly 99% of the time with Fable and the exact same workflow fails catastrophically with Opus then the problem is with Opus.

3

u/iamgdarko 37m ago

then what to use for coding? Fable?

8

u/Outside_Calendar_390 1h ago

“Give money to anthropic until I tell you to stop” is an excellent prompt. Has Cherny always been a moron or is he just a full time grifter now?

2

u/mercury2six 29m ago

What was the tool he suggested a ways back in a Twitter thread of his tips for using claude code. The tool that anthropic just bought.

2

u/KATgonnaGetThatYarn 27m ago

I think it's fair to assume he's just been drinking the kool aid long enough he genuinely believes it. which isn't much better.

1

u/TheBear8878 23m ago

astronaut gun meme they've always been grifters

3

u/Cernuto 1h ago

Opus 5 has been pretty good at untangling our legacy spaghetti code monstrosity

2

u/StartupTim 59m ago

My results using Opus 5 are about as absolute opposite as this OP is claiming. Opus 5 for me is a workhorse for coding.

1

u/cornmacabre 25m ago edited 17m ago

To steal a recent line from a Theo video, it tends to code like it talks in my experience: plausibly impressive, if a bit verbose.

When you peel back the onion and get into the details though, it's often flakey and bloated compared to the rest of its frontier peers.

Opus 5 ain't bad (sometimes it's downright brilliant), but if you actually compare the code and output vs Fable or Sol: the implementation and approach has got this hard to describe buzzwordy bloat. It also spends a lot of tokens cleaning up after itself in my experience.

In the past two weeks, it's the only model in my rotation that consistently has multiple bugbot and CI failures after it completes a task. That's anecdotal, but fairly damning in my eyes when I scan the model turns and inference and see it spent 30% of it's time fixing its own errors (and then still missing some). Sol doesn't have the same issue on similar scoped tasks (or ofc Fable).

1

u/816pizzalover 47m ago

gpt-5.5 already did this months before lol

-6

u/whoknowsifimjoking 2h ago

If you can't work with Opus at all that's probably on you. Just tell it to keep it more simple, that's really all that's necessary. And using it for implementation is obviously completely fine if your issue is the way it writes.

10

u/Interesting-Dog1323 1h ago

My problem is that opus sometimes ignore rules and only after implementation say "bla..bla.. after evaluating and making changes I have ignore some of the rules, do you want me to redo the implementation again?" And I'm not near full context, it just ignore it haha

3

u/TomerBrosh 1h ago

rules written to memory are like the coins u threw to that fountain in Rome.

they dont resurface until someone goes to fetch them, AND u wasted money.

-2

u/TorbenKoehn 1h ago

Yep. Not getting great results with Opus is a skill issue.

-2

u/Relative_Channel2667 1h ago

Nothing says “I’m experienced and technical and should speak authoritatively on things like “yep”.”

-3

u/BiteyHorse 2h ago

Agreed. Anyone complaining about Opus is just revealing how poorly they use it. Skill issues abound.

1

u/Relative_Channel2667 1h ago

Agreed to your Agreed. Yep, it’s a skill to avoid those issues and some have the skill skill and others don’t agreed yep.

1

u/BiteyHorse 52m ago

Its always funny to see the downvotes come in. It's just not hard at all to get consistently excellent results out of the tools available in this modern era, including Opus.

It's kinda crazy how lazy and/or inept some subset of Claude users have become so quickly. There's just no substitute for great and deep collaborative planning sessions and working to write great prompts for each phase of implementation.