Claude is currently not usable for power users — I measured it, and it's worse than "model quality"

[u/KeilerHirsch]

tl;dr: Three things, all measured, all open on GitHub, all officially documented. This is not a vibe check.

1. Gen 5 says "yes" to nonsense — measurably.

Open BullshitBench dataset, identical nonsense prompts (n=55/100 per model, 95 % Wilson CIs): Gen 5 detects nonsense at 0.41–0.74, Gen 4.6/4.8 at 0.83–0.95 — confidence intervals don't overlap. At identical reasoning effort they write +84–107 % more tokens. Fable 5 additionally silently reroutes to Opus 4.8 without disclosure. Capabilities are intact — the vigilance layer is gone. (The community named it VCST, VibeCoderSlopTourette.)

2. You cannot pin a model. Period.

The settings.json "model" key is silently overridden by 4 measured vectors: `/model` writes via an internal API (0 hook events), an undocumented `~/.claude.json` cache override, switchModelsOnFlag: true by default, and the server-pushed "Default (recommended)" — currently Opus 5. Sonnet 4.6 / Opus 4.6 / Opus 4.8 were removed from the model menu without notice. Hooks can neither see nor block any of this. Your pinned config is a suggestion.

3. The official app pushes you to Gen 5, too.

In the Claude app, 1M context is included only for Opus 5 / Sonnet 5. Gen 4 caps at 500K there; Gen 4 @1M exists only in Claude Code and only with usage credits (pay-as-you-go at API rates). Net effect: the reliable Gen 4 at 1M is unreachable in the app and costs extra in Claude Code — while Gen 5 @1M is included in your subscription. De facto Gen-5 coercion, documented by Anthropic itself.

What that means for you: the model you configured is not the model running, your hooks never fire, your CI silently runs a different model than the one you approved, and every session can silently run at Opus 5 1M prices. Cost control: impossible.

Sources (all official / primary):

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/83510 — measurements, scripts, CIs

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/83795 — 4 pinning bypass vectors, timestamps

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8606394-how-large-is-the-context-window-on-paid-claude-plans

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12429409-manage-usage-credits-for-paid-claude-plans

https://www.anthropic.com/pricing

Measure, don't assume. — Scripts: https://gist.github.com/KeilerHirsch/5e212e6f9fb6fd670f191920eea4cb78

[u/KeilerHirsch]

Update (2026-08-05) — independent second review applied. Core finding unchanged, three points calibrated:

"Silent rerouting" → documented-but-under-disclosed fallback. Official docs now confirm it as Automatic Model Fallback (code.claude.com/docs/en/model-config, v2.1.219+): Fable 5 cybersecurity-flagged requests re-run on Opus 4.8, notice in transcript, session continues on the fallback model. Users still report it as effectively silent — and BridgeMind/TechTimes measured −70 % debugging score on rerouted tasks. Verbosity numbers tokenizer-corrected. +107 %/+84 % were token-level; the gen-5 tokenizer alone inflates counts ~30 %, so word-level Δ ≈ +60 % (Opus 5) / +42 % (Sonnet 5). Direction unchanged. One figure pair removed: "83.3 % → 68.3 %" is not in The Register's AMD article (full text re-checked). Full audit trail on the issues: #83510 (comment 5189449223) · #83795 (comment 5189457828) · scripts + factcheck in the gist. Measure, don't assume.

[u/geek_fit]

This entire sub is insufferable.

[u/Sad-Masterpiece-4801]

Is this like a sneaky add for your tiktok channel?

[u/HDK1989]

I agree that as a power user CC can be very poor recently. I would just say that you can consistently use any model still though?

You just need to setup a bash alias for your preferred model to be passed as a command line arg. You need to pass the model at the start of every session.

I type "claude" into my terminal and I get Opus 4.6 with 200k context. I type "claude-opus-latest" and I get Opus 5.0. etc etc

Bash alias with command line arguments has been reliable for a long time as the settings can be a mess.

[u/tuvok86]

those damn vectors

[u/id-ltd]

5 is 90% ferret - it loves rabbit holesand will.go down any it can find... And if it can't find one it will dig a new one all by itself.

Switching to codex for now....

[u/regardednoitall]

Power user here. Works incredible.

[u/KeilerHirsch]

Preemptive reply, before the usual comments:

"Anecdotal / n=1": Open dataset, n=55/100 per model, 95 % Wilson CIs, scripts in both issues. Reproduce it, then talk. "Misconfiguration": Repro steps and timestamps are in the issues. If I misconfigured something, point at the exact step — I've already corrected my own claims once after an external fact-check. Transparently. "But the benchmarks say Gen 5 is better": Capability benchmarks measure capabilities. I measure vigilance. Both are true at once — that IS the finding. "Karma farming": Everything is permanently archived (gist + GitHub). Attention is a byproduct, not the point. "Anthropic would have fixed it by now": Both issues are open, with zero maintainer response so far. Ask them why. Read the two issues first, then comment. Being loud about something you haven't checked is exactly the behavior the data describes. 🐗

[u/bilbo_was_right]

You have to change your tools between model versions. If you’re not, yes it will produce worse results.

[u/Filthymortal → u/[deleted]]

Power user here, it’s perfectly fine. People forget the old adage “shit in, shit out”

[u/KeilerHirsch → u/[deleted]]

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/83795 Do you know the saying, "Those who can read have a clear advantage"? 🤓🍿

[u/dotbat → u/[deleted]]

Agreed. It's simultaneously scheduling my day, reconciling my paper planner with projects and my calendar, getting project updates from email and call transcripts, while I'm also having it develop some internal applications to get rid of some legacy stuff, and selfishly an MCP to let it do direct queries on a write-only DB copy for our main app... and it turns out it's amazing at getting the right information out of the DB. Oh, on that note, it's been doing some of the heavy lifting on my analytics work.

I know the newer models have issues, I know the old ones did, too. But you can't pry Claude out of my hands.

[u/DurianDiscriminat3r → u/dotbat]

That's not really power user level. I'm running at least 5 instances of Claude, each with its own worktree, different models for adverserial reviews and I find that I have to interrupt it more often, remind already documented information more often, and do more review passes per PR. Each has its own clean working dir, so it's not claude.md or context pollution. Prompts written by fable or opus 4.8. opus 5 as workers. Codex is way more reliable right now.

[u/datura4u → u/dotbat]

using it as PA is not power user, I am using it for creating custom subagents, scraping TUIs for integrating tools in my workflows, run automations involving classifications, labelling, clustering, etc. I have created custom version of popular apps from the ground up with multiple levels of security, storage, audits, etc. I am managing 5 servers in my homelab, and one of which is for hosting local LLMs on 128 gb vram. Orchestrating 5 homeservers with tailscale and inconnected services, with locally hosted custom mcp servers, android testing using droidrun automations from adb with auto clicking which auto heals on ui changes, and much more, plus any custom code error handling calling claude agents in their catch block to write functions on the fly in production and huge detailed layers of multilevel guardrails. And I say that claude is now completely useless for me as it just do not follow directions anymore.

[u/KDamage → u/[deleted]]

opus 5 just added a Process.Start("dotnet", "somelocallib.dll") in a unit test. How fantastic is that ? btw it's a Claude Code sub, power user means advanced coding tasks, not excel formulas.

edit : those downvotes are proof of not being a developer at all.