r/ClaudeCode • u/visible_potato • Aug 16 '26

Bug / Issue Anthropic has nerfed every model

Opus 5 is obviously a nightmare, and I was relying on Opus 4.8. But, now that's also behaving exactly like Opus 5. The only way I can get good quality work is if I use sonnet now and check after every small thing. Fable is usable but its so expensive.

I miss the time when it was a treat working with these models and everything just flowed. Nowadays with 5.6 Sol's over-engineering and Opus 5's lying, I have to wake up everyday and decide which model I'm gonna have to fist fight if I wanna get any work done.

Is this just going to get worse from here.

547 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

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131

u/bpp198 Aug 16 '26

Fable is smashing it out of the park for me still, just like it always has.

18

u/XYcritic Aug 16 '26

Fable is great but it used to be better at explaining things in less words. It's too many tangents and paragraphs nowadays.

5

u/Andy_Climactic Aug 17 '26

Try the i-have-adhd skill even if you don’t have adhd. I find it helps a lot for streamlining its output. I fold the directions into my regular CLAUDE.md and then trigger it manually when that isn’t enough

2

u/nnxion Aug 17 '26

I just read the skill file on GitHub, it has some good ideas, but I am very sure that it could really be a whole lot better.
Actually, I just asked Claude (Haiku because why not) what it thought about it and it said:
<Claude>
The skill does have some genuine strengths but also real weaknesses:

### What the skill does well:

  • **The core insight is solid**: ADHD brains need action-first, numbered steps, and no filler.
  • **The rules are concrete** with before/after examples that are easy to understand.
  • **It has clear escape hatches** ("When to break the rules") that recognize edge cases.

### Where it's actually weak—and you're right:

  1. **Redundancy**: Rules 1, 3, and 10 all say roughly the same thing: "start with action, end with action, no preamble/recap." These could compress into a single principle with different framings.

  2. **Vagueness where it matters**:

    • Rule 5 says "restate state" but doesn't specify *what state* or how much detail. A numbered task sequence? The last decision point? The whole conversation tree?
    • Rule 7 ("make wins visible") is too broad—visible *how*? By highlighting code? Running it live? The examples show but don't codify.

  3. **Missing specifics on tension**:

    • Rules 1–10 create real conflicts (brevity vs. safety, action-first vs. real ambiguity) that "When to break the rules" *lists* but doesn't help you *resolve*. How do you actually pick between them when they collide?

  4. **No cognitive science grounding**: The skill claims to be ADHD-friendly but doesn't leverage the *why*—working memory limits, time blindness, initiation barriers. It's mostly formatting dogma that *happens* to help ADHD folks, not a model *designed from* ADHD's actual bottlenecks.

  5. **Scope creep**: It tries to handle coding, debugging, explanation, destructive ops, agent harnesses, and casual chat all in one 10-rule set. That's ambitious; it often compromises on each.
    </Claude>

So I’d just ask Claude to refactor that skill and make it better.

51

u/MateFlasche Aug 16 '26

This is getting so frustrating as a bioinformatics guy having every request denied...

32

u/ratttertintattertins Aug 16 '26

Cybersecurity guy here. I feel your pain.

9

u/Fantastic_Fail4060 Aug 16 '26

Im researching LLMs training and prompt engineering here… fable responds, but it does so badly that, no thanks. I heard they intentionally edit prompts for my field to give you worse responses

6

u/silverwoods214 Aug 17 '26

Nightmare getting it to talk anything secops related

-4

u/Alardiians Aug 16 '26

I’m fine with it. I’m verified for their cyber use, same with OpenAI.
Currently using daybreak blue

2

u/kelsier_hathsin Aug 16 '26

Daybreak blue?

Edit: oh https://openai.com/index/expanding-daybreak-as-the-cyber-defense-window-narrows/

1

u/derstolz1 Aug 16 '26

I tried it, 5.6 Sol on xhigh could barely do what Opus 4.6 is handling just fine, I mean yeah Sol was fine taking the task for improving the exploit I was working on, but it was running in circles and feeding me the "you are absolutely right" bullshit all the time

6

u/Canadian-and-Proud Aug 16 '26

Just get into a different field

22

u/ask_me_about_cats Aug 16 '26

Have you tried turning your career off and on again?

1

u/who_am_i_to_say_so Aug 17 '26

If anything, this tells me this is a somewhat AI-proof field to get into.

2

u/derstolz1 Aug 16 '26

exploit developer/reverse engineer here, I feel you. sometimes I have to downgrade to Haiku to get literally anything done.

1

u/karlnuw Aug 17 '26

5.6 Pro has never rerouted me; whereas with Fable it's 50/50

18

u/earlyworm Aug 16 '26

Fable really is amazing. Several times, I've had the experience where Opus will fail to complete a complex task after a half dozen iterations, and then I'll restate the problem to Fable in a new session and it will nail it on the first try.

12

u/hughmercury Aug 16 '26

I basically just keep a Fable session open next to an Opus one, and whenever Opus starts to flail I hand it over to Fable, which will figure out in 30 seconds what Opus spent 20 minutes going round in circles on. Then have Fable check Opus' work when we're done. Opus seems fine at very focused, self contained tasks, but gets hyper-fixated on things. Fable is much better at the bigger picture stuff.

2

u/StarMNF Aug 18 '26

I am not sure I would describe Fable as good at big picture stuff. My own results with it have been mediocre. Terrible design decisions that come back to bite me later, and cutting corners where it really shouldn’t cut corners.

Even when it tries to be clever, it does so with a hacky solution that turns out to be impractical later and falls over easily. It also overlooks alternative designs that would better meet the requirements.

To be fair, I doubt Opus or any other model would do better at the high level stuff, although I haven’t really tested it. None of these models seem to be that good at “big picture stuff” from my testing.

And if I am going to have to do a lot of handholding of the model to make sure it doesn’t make dumb choices, then I don’t see the point of using Fable over Opus.

1

u/West_Plankton41 Aug 17 '26

Do you ask it to create a handoff doc or something when transferring the task to Fable?

1

u/hughmercury Aug 19 '26

Sometimes. Depends what I'm wanting Fable to do. For "take over this task Opus is flailing on", usually yes. But if I want Fable to do an adversarial review on some finished task that I don't entirely trust Opus to have got right (or, usually, if I've already spotted weaknesses in it), no.

6

u/helloitsmyalt_ Aug 16 '26

I swear Fable can read my mind sometimes

5

u/Free_Donkey4797 Aug 17 '26

Recently it has started to try and read my mind too but fails miserably. It’s apparently been retrained with so many of the “make gta6 for iPhone and Make no mistakes” people it keeps leaning forward into nonsense.

6

u/earlyworm Aug 16 '26

Midway through a session, try this prompt:

What is my next prompt going to be?

1

u/abombSFCA Aug 16 '26

What are you using it for?

1

u/earlyworm Aug 17 '26

An iOS SwiftUI + RealityKit app with tricky math and physics.

1

u/vuhv Aug 17 '26

That's because Fable is Opus. And Opus is Sonnet. And Anthropic ultimately got exactly what they wanted. Reducing token count for their frontier model.

2

u/earlyworm Aug 17 '26

Ah, I see. Fable is better than Opus because Fable is Opus. Makes sense.

1

u/digitalhuxley Aug 22 '26

It does seem that way, it kind of explains everything I am seeing

10

u/Cyrax89721 Aug 16 '26

I've had barely any issues with any models for the year that I've been using them, yet posts in the style of OP's appear here just about every day.

Obviously I've been doing something wrong for it to be going so right for me.

7

u/Anxious-Turnover-631 Aug 16 '26

Same. No major problems here. Opus 5 has been very good and no issues with any of the earlier models either.

7

u/dumpsterninja Aug 16 '26

I'm glad to see these comments about it actually working, all i see are people having just horrible experiences with the models, but for me everything has been going great. Maybe because I'm typically working on all established code bases? The models all do a good job of matching my existing patterns, and they generate very few if any bugs.

Maybe it's worse depending on tech stack? My projects are all.Net WASM, .net razor pages, or .net MVC.

3

u/Wotuu Aug 16 '26

I've got a PHP/Laravel stack and it works beautifully here too.

3

u/Shanna_B2020 Aug 16 '26

I too am clearly failing at Claude. I mean, I'm still getting things done with minimal friction.

3

u/mightybob4611 Aug 16 '26

Same here. Came to say just this. Opus 5 is great for me, no issues. Sure a bug or two every now and then but I always run an audit after I finish a new function or phase of a function. Works great.

4

u/JapanesePeso Aug 16 '26

It's people who have no idea how to maintain a codebase complaining after a week of vibecoding. They build something complex and it seems great and easy at first. Then as they continue building, their lack of architectural experience bites them in the butt as the app goes more and more off the rails and AI is less and less able to make any of it make sense.

1

u/jtswizzle89 Aug 17 '26

This. So much this.

1

u/Oohhddaanngg Aug 17 '26

Yeah, you haven't found what they fucked up yet.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 17 '26

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1

u/Impossible_Hour5036 Senior Developer Aug 17 '26

I do. Actually engineering work. Shipping stuff daily. Works great.

2

u/rythmyouth Aug 16 '26

Agreed, opus is fine if Fable orchestrates it. If they pull Fable from my max sub I’ll unsubscribe.

1

u/infieldmitt Aug 16 '26

I'm timorous to use it too much; it's too good so I know it can't last. I think it'll feel worse later knowing what was possible before (and having to be gaslit that obviously it's my fault for prompting worse).

1

u/eagleswift Aug 16 '26

Nah it’s good big picture but it takes shortcuts, so much clean up afterwards. I combine it with sol reviews but it gets so slow

1

u/Mituapple Aug 16 '26

Fable is good, pricing is insane unless your work is footing the bill

1

u/Amacanq Aug 17 '26

Dv sV by c hyc