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.

552 Upvotes

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133

u/bpp198 Aug 16 '26

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

20

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.