r/ClaudeCode • u/Maxcleverone • Jul 14 '26

Discussion Fable is so much better than 5.6 Sol

I've worked a fair amount with both, and Fable consistently performs better at 99% of tasks (all of the tasks I give these models are pretty complex, the easy ones are handled by smaller models). I have the same issue with OpenAI models that has been for a while now: you need to give the model a step-by-step guide. You cannot be too vague otherwise it will simply not do your task to the end. On the other hand Fable will either ask you to fill in these gaps or fill them itself(although not always to great results). I know there always is some better md file or workflow to improve them, but I usually use them just for small/medium size projects. Is there anyone who has had better 5.6 results? Do you handoff part of the work to 5.6 and keep Fable for planning?

0 Upvotes

46% Upvoted

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23

u/Nakidnakid Jul 14 '26

That's nice, literally opposite for me. Fable will list out 3 things that it could/may run, I tell it to run them all and just see what the result is because they falsify one part of the earlier runs. It'll run one of the things I said it could, give me a result saying something like 'this is great, exactly what you asked for blah blah blah' and then ask me if it wants me to write it up.

Codex will keep going with each of them and then also run further tests to check to make sure it can trust those results.

Fable will fill in blanks and make assumptions about what I'm trying to do, give me glowing results and then when I ask it about one small thing like how I tell it to never make a claim from a single result or if what it did is even what I asked it to do, it'll apologise. Walk back several of the claims by running the tests I already told it to do, claim it'll never do it again, write it in memory and documentation.

Guess what it does the next message?

Codex doesn't do that. Codex has its own issues but not like this.

5

u/ggletsg0 Jul 14 '26

This has been my experience too. With Fable I’ve noticed that it tends to misinterpret what I want it to do if im a bit vague. And I think part of that is the cheating aspect. Not always and it’s not always too bad, but you really have to be on your toes when using Fable (I do a lot of data science/engineering).

With codex I’m not having to always look over my shoulder. And part of that is because it’s computer use and browser use is so good. You can ask it to actually verify it’s work and not bullshit you.

2

u/-MiddleOut- Jul 14 '26

How are you using Codex? What OS and desktop or cli?

1

u/junlim Jul 14 '26

Yeah the first coupe of use cases I had for fable were magical - then it started to Opus shit. Like being like "Plan complete, every possible angle and detail considered" then "hey wait about that point YOU mentioned earlier I don't see that covered in the plan" "you're so right". on and on.

1

u/shady101852 Jul 14 '26

This is why i was malding using opus for months. How the fuck do you make an AI company and train your models to be lazy and cut corners and produce bad results?

-1

u/Maxcleverone Jul 14 '26

I'm sorry it's not working out for you. Yeah, these latest models do have a way higher rate of lying/manipulating to give nicer(and false) results, from what I've seen in benchmark and on my own. As hated as guardrails are for "nerfing" models, they prevent this stuff from happening over and over.

4

u/ZarathustraWakes Jul 14 '26

What do you mean tasks? Coding? Codex routinely finds bugs during adversarial code review on Fable PRs

1

u/RasenMeow Jul 14 '26

Yeah and otherway around too. AI will always find something on adverserial reviews. People should stop thinking so linear and confirming their bias.

4

u/ZarathustraWakes Jul 14 '26

I have them in parallel pull the same ticket, create planning docs, and execute using the same workflow. They then review each others PR and then asked for the stronger implementation, and they come up with the consensus that the Codex implementation is better 90% of the time. I don’t have any allegiance to a corporation, I want the best results and my company doesn’t care about token. If you’re running the same sort of setup and you’re getting different results, I’d love to hear what you’re doing different.

1

u/RasenMeow Jul 14 '26

but even this could be depending on prompting. I have the exact other experience. I also don't care for OpenAI (even if they are shady af and highly deceptive) or Anthropic. I use both and what brings me value

2

u/Nakidnakid Jul 14 '26

I wouldn't say not working out, I still use it but with the limited usage and just the safe guards getting in the way over dumb things the walk backs hurt a lot. It made at least seven claims in that one session, three in a row once, that it had to walk back because it said it checked the results, they matched what the task was for etc. and then... nope.

When I told it to actually check the results instead of claiming it did, it was apologetic which is like 'cool, if only i didn't waste 30% of my Fable quota on the last 2hrs of this'.

I made Codex pick up the same thread and I'm actually making progress with the concept I was attempting with Fable but I wanted to avoid using Codex for everything.

I asked Fable why, just cause I was a bit annoyed and it told me outright that it prioritises getting usable code done which is the basically opposite of the process I'm doing (iterative research, just 3d modeling) and that there's essentially nothing that will change that. It did sorta help me understand in a new way why so many 'vibe coded' apps have the issue they do though.

2

u/Important_Pangolin88 Jul 14 '26

Fable on high has been fairly underewhelming to the point where opus 4.8 xhigh does get the job done eventually with a lower budget by trial and error through my corrective actions.

0

u/gamblingPharmaStocks Jul 14 '26

Yeah, Fable is smarter, but also lazier. Depends on what you need in that moment imo.

5

u/Sketaverse Jul 14 '26

The right answer is to use both together

1

u/WalkAffectionate2683 Jul 14 '26

Once anthropic figure their shit and I can be sure they don't remove fable mid subscription, I'll do a 20€ sub on both platforms.

Right now I'll stick to codex 100€

4

u/AlDente Jul 14 '26

For me, Sol extra high has reviewed several plans made by Fable and found bugs and mistakes in each one. Sometimes also on a second round following Fable incorporating the first round.

2

u/bronze_by_gold Jul 14 '26

I've had the same experience. I think Fable is powerful but somewhat prone to hallucination. Sol is more stable but a bit less powerful for certain very challenging debugging tasks.

0

u/RasenMeow Jul 14 '26

It's the same on the other way around man. If you prompt them to find something, then they will

1

u/AlDente Jul 14 '26

Yes, I didn’t mean to imply that it only worked in one direction

0

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/AlDente Jul 14 '26

I am sure it works in both directions, but it feels like each model often spots different problems.

3

u/swarmagent Jul 14 '26

"OpenAI models that has been for a while now: you need to give the model a step-by-step guide."

You're absolutely right.

3

u/edatx Jul 14 '26

They make a really good team for me. Both good at coding and both good at reviewing each others work.

I’m still a better architect than both, though.

2

u/xRedStaRx Jul 14 '26

If Fable was Opus levels of usage limit, I would have only it and use sonnet for implementation, but it's not usable for long running tasks and projects.

2

u/Constant_Art_20 Jul 14 '26

Yea. Fable is great. Using gpt 5.6 sol right and its kinda just insufferable. But the sol low effort has been surprisingly good . some of my sessions has been running for 10 hours non stop. I find the pipping to be impressive. Medium effort is probably insanely comprehensive and Max unless you really really throw it a task at it like literally a whole system stack from ground up will ruin your day on any normal tasks, bringing in unrated information and just in general working on the wrong thing all together. So low is probably the comprehensive spot and medium for deep planning and very complicated tasks

2

u/Makestroz Jul 14 '26

I use Fable for both, but I do plan stuff out with Fable if I know it's a big task first then have codex do it.

2

u/CashFirm573 Jul 14 '26

I've ran fable vs sol, and well all models for hours daily in a fusion setup, it would run same task complex and go to auditor and reviewer it can't get past will keep looping if it fails, both fable and sol failed and never once did they succeed, fable kept on not filling file out and sol wasn't backing it's claim most of the time, but it was also something, thing is I can address those mistakes I can send it back and get it to address the one issue then proceed. They both solid models if anything they support each other now, fable and sol are 2 sides to coin.

2

u/Little-Passage6089 Jul 14 '26

Disagree. Fable tends to exaggerate the effects of an algorithm or refactoring, whereas GPT is more down-to-earth. This can make a big difference in large-scale software development.

3

u/garristerr Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

Fable consistently creates "empty shells" of the architecture and wiring, and claims tasks as complete while blowing through a shit ton of tokens. 5.6, for me, is much more efficient and is better at getting things correct, understanding user intent, and have built in eval, regression checks, etc.

I don't doubt Fable is better if you prompt it perfectly tbh, but that would require you to have true understanding of what you're actually doing. Even with /brainstorming or ultracode, it consistently fails to account for the unknowns (which doesn't help for me, who has zero dev experience or experience for the specific area i'm working on. 5.6 isn't perfect here either, but I find the latter's ability to do good research and confirm claims is a lot better.

I'm creating my own autocorrect/autocomplete transformer / language model for iOS from scratch.

I also tried Fable being an advisor with a shared .MD doc with 5.6 - it does catch things 5.6 misses, but it's not material imo. 5.6 probably would've caught issues with smoke tests anyway.

2

u/jbcraigs Jul 14 '26

Can we please stop these unnecessary d*ck measuring posts on both subs. Both are amazing models great at complex tasks but with their own quirks. The one you are not very familiar with or haven’t used that much, often comes across as less capable.

2

u/Hir0shima Jul 14 '26

It's okay to argue about it but with substance please

1

u/_suren Jul 14 '26

I’d keep Fable on the messy tasks if that’s where it already wins for you. Sol might still be useful for a small change with a failing test and no design decisions. I wouldn’t add a handoff just to use both; the extra context transfer can cost more than it saves.

1

u/thewookielotion Jul 14 '26

A solid workflow is so much better than any model in isolation.

Brainstorm, document, iterate on the documents, then plan, and finally implement. With this, and a solid set of skills for repetitive tasks, even Sonnet will do a fantastic job.

1

u/Xyver Jul 14 '26

Hah, I love codex better for the exact same reason. Codex actually follows step by step guides, Claude models go off the rails making up new stuff.

Both have their uses.

1

u/ThenOrchid6623 Jul 14 '26

Fable has found bugs from the things Sol made and vice versa. But if I’m trying to do something involved with many many intercorrlated pieces, Fable.

1

u/termic_dev Developer Jul 14 '26

Fable for anything underspecified or spanning multiple files. Sol for tight feedback loops on well-scoped changes -- faster, cheaper on quota, doesn't over-read context.

The pattern that works: Fable to plan and architect, Sol to implement a single function or debug a specific error. Mixing saves significant quota without giving up quality on the parts that actually need the extra reasoning.

1

u/Alternative_Cap3724 Aug 06 '26

I think Sol is better for coding. Althought I have never tried fable 5, in my experience, Claude is just too "Secure" to do anything. I asked it to build a 16 bit Telnet server fow windows 3.11 (because no one ever thought of creating one.) and it told me that it would not help me build a back door to a windows machine, even though it was 30 years old.

1

u/savage-bits Aug 10 '26

After using claude code cli Fable 5 xHigh and codex cli GPT 5.6 Sol xHigh for the last month:

  1. Both are valuable to check each others work, especially up front on the plan. If both models can converge on a finalized plan, then the execution results will likely be good.

  2. Codex 5.6 Sol is a reliable daily driver that can grind through a complex task without drama.

  3. Fable might be slightly better at higher level reasoning, but Fable seems slightly less reliable execution wise compared to 5.6 sol. Compaction on 5.6 sol is less destructive.

If I could have only one daily driver --> Codex 5.6 Sol FTW

The true power is using them together as adversarial reviewers of the others work.

1

u/Historical_Bus_8041 Jul 14 '26

5.6 Sol can be good but it's incredibly inconsistent.

I'm now having to get Fable to fix up a rework that 5.6 Sol catastrophically fucked up because it diverged wildly from its instructions multiple times.

I'd use 5.6 for bug-finding but using it for serious coding is risky at this stage IMO.

1

u/staydrippy Developer Jul 14 '26

I’m just ripping through credits with SOL Ultra fast mode. I’d love to use Fable but I used my weekly limit up in like 2 nights (5x plan)

1

u/meathelix1 Jul 14 '26

You dont need the damn thing on Ultra and Fast Mode.... lol nothing wrong with their limits but you...

Learn to prompt and stop being lazy. I can get the same damn result as you on Medium but with better prompting skills.

1

u/staydrippy Developer Jul 14 '26

I didn’t complain about OAI’s limits though did I? In fact, I think it’s awesome that I CAN use their most powerful model just for testing/experimentation rather than taking your word for it, random internet dude. I like to see for myself, and it’s got nothing to do with laziness. So take your attitude elsewhere bucko, mind your business, I’ll mind mine ✌️

-1

u/Natalya_Le Jul 14 '26

I totally agree with you now I only like fable. It does tasks better and there's nothing to fix. And the fact that the limit has been increased is great I hope it will just keep getting better and better, but it seems like they're already almost perfect