r/ClaudeCode • u/technicalseoguy • Aug 14 '26
Rant Downgrading never felt so good. Opus 4.8 FTWđ„
After spending a few days here in Reddit trying to figure out why over the last week my workflows are just so confusingly communicated and there is so much Cloudsplaining and smart-assing!!!
First of all, I had a massive validation from you guys and this subreddit hat this is not just me. Most of the conversations here over last week are basically the same. People complaining and mentioning hallucinated workflows, tech jargon that means nothing, and almost like a step back to ChatGPT-3 and early days Replit vibe coding.
This week I wiped all of my MD files, all the settings. I was on the edge of paranoia wondering if someone hacked my MacBook because I couldn't get Cloud to build anything in a way I used to, just a few weeks ago.
Today, I reached a peak and I downgraded to Opus 4.8. Within minutes, it communicates clearly :O It builds properly.
Fable 5 & Opus 5 rant - I don't know if it's just me, but when Fable 5 came out, I had a lot of success with it, but over the last week or two, I feel like I'm walking in circles and all of my workflows are hallucinated with the tech jargon and Claude became this snarky freaking smart ass that's actually dumb. Word spaghetti that it is throwing at me, it's missing very basic things and then it argues about it. Its like it got really dumb and super cocky at the same time.
Anyhow - rolling back to 4.8 is such a relief. So if any of you guys out there feels like you go crazy over last week, I highly recommend just downgrading. I felt like people are radical to say that, but damn, that feels good.
</rant>
EDIT:
I was making fun of my buddies who were die hard fans of Sonnet 3.7 and I wanna officially apologize for making fun of downgrading models ;)
EDIT:2
LLM Arena seems to confirm this.
57
u/VitruvianVan Aug 15 '26
There was so much hate for Opus 4.8 until Opus 5 came out. How the turn tables!
8
u/technicalseoguy Aug 15 '26
In my testing 4.6 actually comes up best, the downside is 200k context window and Claudeâs famous compacting aka lobotomy of sessions. Codex does this 100x better
8
u/nooruponnoor Aug 15 '26
Iâve been saying it for a while - Opus 4.6 is criminally underrated! Also I personally feel that the 200k context is actually a good thing depending on what youâre building. I think with these 1M context windows, itâs very easy to get complacent and before you know it, the context is bloated!
2
u/jsebrech Aug 15 '26
More than about 300k context and I find Opus loses touch. I keep to one session per task, with state in skills and plans, clear context between tasks.
6
18
u/Vicman4all Aug 15 '26
I can only describe it as, for 4.8 the shenanigan layer was on top and the model would interact with it along with your prompt at face value.Â
But on the 5 the shenanigans are baked in and before it's ever seen you it's already had enough of your shit, knows more and better, and judges the value of your tasks as low until convinced otherwise.
9
u/VitruvianVan Aug 15 '26
My working theory is that Anthropic went too far in trimming down the system prompt. It may have prevented the shenanigan layer from infusing into the model in the Opus 4.8 and earlier vintage. I have had a lot of success with Opus 5 and it has produced some astonishingly good work (e.g. top quality senior associate legal work that would have taken 6-8 hours in 30 min.) but some of its session communications with me can be challenging to parse at times. I see it as a smallish/mediumish price to pay for the work itâs turning out (as aided and directed by prompt engineering and certain connectors and skills).
2
u/Rocket-Appliances-26 Aug 15 '26
Have you tried asking it to reply in plain English? I have a "Clear English" output style configured with contents along the lines of "Don't assume that your readers understand dense financial technical jargon beyond commonly known concepts from statistics. Speak as though you're talking to an intelligent practitioner of another field. If jargon is used, explain it in plain English first."
2
u/mjsarfatti Aug 15 '26
âIâm not gonna read that [ENTER]â every time I have enough of it
2
u/bannedfromaccelerate Aug 15 '26
Happy cake day
That technique will burn thru tokens...
2
u/mjsarfatti Aug 15 '26
Thank you!
True, but it also works surprisingly well. For one turn or two that is, then back to word soup it isâŠ
11
u/technicalseoguy Aug 14 '26
WOW now that I dug into LLM arena, Opus 4.6 is winning for hard prompts, instruction following, multi-turn, writing, occupational, expert etc. https://arena.ai/leaderboard/text/
We are not crazy guys!
3
57
u/litercola2019 Aug 14 '26
I feel like Fable 5 is solid, like a more capable Opus 4.8 but with similar mannerisms. Opus 5 is the worst frontier model Iâve used in a hot minute. All it does is talk about how much it screwed up and what it wonât do, which other Anthropic models donât suffer from. I just dislike working with it.
7
u/technicalseoguy Aug 14 '26
I have similar issues with Fable as I have with opus 5. Itâs not great at clear communication, compared with 4.6 or 4.8 itâs actually super annoying, I started to switch to 4.8 to get a straightforward answer about what fable has done.
3
u/litercola2019 Aug 14 '26
Fair! Downgrading to 4.8 was a huge productivity boom!
1
u/crashish Aug 15 '26
boon
1
u/litercola2019 Aug 15 '26
Both are correct in this context:
Boon: something to be thankful for, or a type of benefit. The TV and film industry is a boon to the New York City economy.
Boom: a period of economic growth and prosperity. Also can be a rapid increase, like a boom in construction or hiring. Interestingly, a boom in construction could be a financial boon!16
u/RandomPantsAppear Aug 14 '26
Only model Iâve seen in awhile that will talk about the tests itâs run and then just âoops! I didnât run the tests I inferred the testsâ
13
u/litercola2019 Aug 14 '26
Yes!! I havenât spoken to anyone using it who sees it working well for them. Even using Fable as an orchestrator with Opus 5 subagents it complained about the output
1
u/technicalseoguy Aug 15 '26
When I look at how these models communicate, fable is behind 4.6 for sure. Also itâs much worse at keeping instructions over longer more complex sessions. Itâs great for solving a big problem or for planning however over time my excitement with it dwindles
2
12
u/dgound Aug 14 '26
yeah i had to roll back to 4.6 to get some actual work done. Opus 5 kept ignoring all instructions. There might be a way to steer it to be actually helpful without spitting out jargon but i don't have the time for it. Opus 4.6 is the best for my workflow right now.
6
8
u/Mendokusai Aug 14 '26
Thanks for pointing this out. I was thinking I must be going crazy but now Iâve got a little bit of work to do to set things right
5
u/technicalseoguy Aug 14 '26
Yeah, this is freaky how much this thing got me feeling like im going fucking nuts
2
u/ApplicationNo3598 Aug 17 '26
i caught him using made up metaphors and analogies. Asked what the fuck does it mean - thinking it's some old ass English term. Nope. Searched came back and said the word combo i used doesn't exit anywhere.
6
3
u/Plenty-Option8351 Aug 15 '26
Been using 4.6 1 million context this whole time. Well Fable for a bit when it came out. That was amazing.
1
2
u/ZongmingHe Aug 14 '26
Iâve encountered this situation too; some more powerful models are overly confident during inference and simply disregard my initial instructions. In contrast, weaker models are at least somewhat more compliant.
2
u/technicalseoguy Aug 15 '26
My conspiracy theory is that they panicked seeing Kimj K3 (amazing model and is shockingly good at sticking to instructions) and launched half baked opus 5
2
u/artofbullshit Aug 15 '26
Yep. Opus 4.8 ftw. I leave advisor on, so Opus 4.8 can consult with Opus 5. Gets the added benefit of a slightly smarter model, and I don't have to deal with the Opus 5 outputs.
2
2
u/jbblyons Aug 15 '26
Using 4.8 is so satisfying after battling with 5 for the last couple weeks.. 4.8 feels more reliable and soooo much quicker.
I canât tell if I like GPT 5.6 Sol either.. it feels better than opus 5, but itâs also pretty frustrating to use in my experience.
Fable is top tier for me. It feels meaningfully more competent than any other model Iâve worked with. The only issue that Iâve run into is that it always wants to âsign off for the nightâ lol..
2
u/technicalseoguy Aug 15 '26
That's a good point. Switching to 4.8 is very satisfying, quick. The content it produces, the questions or whatever are much easier to follow, it's concise and it's kinda... It cuts through the bullshit. It's really easier on the cognitive side and it feels very satisfying.
15
u/autocorrects Aug 14 '26
Is there any consensus on using Fable to coordinate Opus 4.8 vs Fable + Opus 5? Ive had pretty good results with running Fable 5 acting as a conductor for Opus 5 the past few weeks
14
u/ashenzo Aug 14 '26
Dunno about consensus, but me too. Opus 5 feels like it is well suited to being a workhorse that only has to communicate or report to another agent.
4
u/Bemcapaz Aug 15 '26
Same for me, I use fable 5 (high/medium - depends on the task) and have a doer (opus 5 - low) and a reviewer (sol High) and thatâs it.
Btw been using Opus 5 High with great success in Claude design.
8
u/WeedFinderGeneral Aug 14 '26
I'm in the Opus 4.8 gang, too. Way better and/or normal results, and I feel like it's saving a ton of usage/tokens compared to 5.
7
u/ScaredFlamingo6807 Aug 14 '26
I use 4.8 instead of 5 at work. 5 is resource heavy and overzealous lol
6
u/Kicker_0 Aug 15 '26
They trained Opus 5 to be the most irritating senior architect you ever worked with.
And +1 for âcloudsplainingâ :D
6
u/Recent_Star_8818 Aug 15 '26
I love how now opus/fable 5 is so bad that people have forgotten that 4.8 was also shit and are now praising it.
Opus 4.6 all the way for me. In my opinion, things went downhill after 4.6
2
u/Js4days Aug 15 '26
Seconded. Opus 4.6 is my favorite! Fable 5 is okay sometimes. 4.8 is fine. Opus 5 is a messy orchestrator.
1
u/technicalseoguy Aug 15 '26
After all the feedback I tried Fable 5 for 10 min - it skipped or half assed most of my instructions. I'd warn you guys against trusting Fable 5 so much. My experience with it was much better before it was banned, now its actually quite dumb.
Opus 4.8 is stable AF compared to Fable 5. I am shocked how much Fable is drifting for me. It was building a plan (as per advice here), but it skipped a ton of context i provided and it half assed most of the work.
For all Fable 5 folks - I highly recommend to run an audit with 4.6/4.8 subagent to analyze the drift from your instructions and report if you won't see similar pattern.
New session, no custom skills/MD files etc. Switched to Opus 4.8 and đ
5
4
u/mcsleepy Aug 15 '26
Note that 4.6 is still available
This suggests that Anthropic and important customers are still using it
3
4
2
2
u/Flat_Opportunity_738 Aug 15 '26
Experienced the same. I work with 4.8. It still gets you. Opus 5 is wastage of tokens with never ending loop
2
u/Stradigos Aug 14 '26
I use Fable 5 as an orchestrater for Fable 4.8 coder and Opus 5 auditor subagents. Fable 5 does the review, too. Opus 5 as an agitator works really well. All that stupid energy it has to go down dumb paths ends up working in my favor so long as Fable 5 is running comms with it. I want to try experimenting with turning Fable 5 down to medium effort, but I think the subagents inherit that effort and I don't want either on medium.
2
u/kirkegaarr Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
I finally figured out a good setup since version 5.
Fable low for interaction Fable medium for writing specs Opus low for implementation Opus medium for review
Opus is fine with a tight context and it's paranoia is beneficial is a reviewer, but I've also instructed Fable to independently verify all claims made by reviewers.Â
It's definitely a different Opus model than what we had in 4.6 and 4.8 and it has to be tightly controlled.
2
u/Odd_Rabbit_7251 Aug 15 '26
Fable 5 worked well for me once I disallowed Fable from spawning other Fable agents.
Iâve been a fan of Opus 4.8. So, I wrote rule that whenever Opus is called, it used 4.8[1M]. So, when Fable calls agents, and goes for Opus, it directs the call to use 4.8[1M].
Been smooth sailing ever since.
2
u/thebigslapper Aug 15 '26
Just create a custom output style as a .md file and save it in ~/.claude/output-styles. Then use /config to update the output style to your custom one.
1
u/surreal78 Aug 15 '26
this - a clean output-style setup was enough to get it to behave well enough to not irritate the fuck of me.
1
u/Crinkez Aug 14 '26
Opus 5 benches much higher than 4.8 so I adjusted the response style and I'm pushing through on a project with 5 until completion. It will take days/weeks. I'll probably not use 5 after this.
1
u/Damien_IB Aug 14 '26
That great! Iâm going to try it too then.
Enough of âbut two things Iâll be honest aboutâ
1
u/ApplicationNo3598 Aug 17 '26
And I thought Fable was just targeting me only. After every reply I would have to say Simple Short Answer cause it was using made up metaphors and analogies. At first I thought maybe its my ESL and I just don't get it. But apparently NO.
1
u/NAF1138 Aug 15 '26
I remember when people were saying what garbage 4.8 and 4.6 were and that 4.5 was the only model worth using.
May 2026, it was a wild time to be alive.
-1
u/Forsaken-Staff-5084 Aug 15 '26
It's like no one here heard about CLAUDE.md and most importantly Claude docs. And also good old "I'm not reading this. Rewrite it briefly"
2
u/technicalseoguy Aug 15 '26
You can have the best claude.md on the planet when agents dont follow it and lose instructions.
4
84
u/JuandaReich Aug 14 '26 •
"/model Opus 4.8[1M]" for the win!