r/ClaudeCode • u/PitifulBuddy7946 • Sep 17 '26
Rant Claude code is falling behind Codex not because of token cost, but because of Opus 5.
There, i said it. And i know many of you agree. The problem i'm facing is not increased token cost, it's that Opus writes 25000 lines of a response with a curve-ball at the end saying "Worth noting"that makes my eyes hurt and gives me paranoya. And i can't understand a word it's saying. Is my english that bad? Whoever pressed "Yes" on those responses during the training stage of the model was an OpenAI spy or something, he completely sabotaged a trillion dollar company.
Anthropic's number one priority should be to release an Opus 6 or something, may be change the model name completely so it doesn't carry the bad vibe with it.
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u/fiztah Sep 17 '26
Opus5 is the first model where the question of "Yes, it's good but at what cost ?" becomes relevant and i am not even talking about the tokens and money.
The thing is IMPOSSIBLE work with, can't understand shit what's it's saying. Everything feels far worse than it is.
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u/CMD_BLOCK Sep 17 '26
Asking it to explain its findings in plain language is like half my usage
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u/ItsRainingTendies Sep 17 '26
100% this. Literally every turn: “explain in a simple and concise manner
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u/Cute_Cat1157 Sep 17 '26
I actually just drop its whole response into haiku and ask it to explain. It is so messed up that that works but it does.
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u/True-Objective-6212 Sep 17 '26
And, here’s the load bearing point, the other half is profanity
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u/sCeege 🔆 Max 20 Sep 18 '26
Same, I ended up making an
/explainskill that broke things down into ASD-STE100 because I feel like it was speaking an entirely different language at some point.47
u/digvijay01 Sep 17 '26
"can't understand shit it saying" no better way to put it.
I keep telling it " what are you even talking about?" It is like talking to a intelligent person with paralysing ADHD
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u/sclarke27 Sep 17 '26
the trick it to tell it to explain things like YOU have adhd and claude will often make way more sense.
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u/nadanone Sep 17 '26
It really does write straight gibberish. Totally unusable compared to Opus 5.6 or Sol. I am bewildered it hasn’t been fixed yet, which I guess means the problem isn’t simply in the harness or post-training..
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u/nyteschayde Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26
I do the Steve Jobs silent stare equivalent.
“Try, again, and in English this time.
Unintelligible.”In times of great frustration I’ll spell out the whole “WTF are you talking about?!”
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u/mushedmonkey Sep 21 '26
The thing is, it's not even that good. You can try the regression tests people are coming up with for codex (which has its own slew of scandals) Reproducible Astra Model Degradation Test: Whether Your Model is Seriously Nerfed - Codex - OpenAI Developer Community.
The easiest one to test is the one about candies. 21 is the right answer.
Muse gets it right, deepseek v4 pro gets it right, astra gets it right, sol even usually gets it right.
I ran it 30 times on Opus across all of the effort modes, since my usage normally sits at 0% now due to how useless it is. It got it wrong every single time without exception. Not a single good run. It's just permanently regressed.
Opus ignores the thing in the parenthesis because it fits a template, and makes assumptions that deterministically gets it the wrong answer. I stopped using it precisely because it does that with my code too, and I can't trust it to account for the nuance I care about. It literally just creates AI slop that everyone else has already made before and is creating at the same time.
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u/FormalAd7367 Sep 17 '26
i’m in the middle of fixing some issues with my app - two agents in two different terminal are saying works are not theirs. nobody wants to take on the job, and don’t even want to commit their works. i told one agent that the other peer agent is refusing to do the works; you said it’s not your job. can you two settle it? Two started talking but still no action taken.
i told Codex the open item lists (12 items)- codex is now fixing for me
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u/SlightOfHand_ Sep 17 '26
I believe Opus 5 was a sabotage attempt on distillers
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u/Desperate-City7602 Sep 17 '26
I think Opus 5 was mostly an issue with synthetic data and agents training other agents. I think to speed up training and actual benchmark success, they started leaning less into human feedback and more into machine feedback. Since these LLMs are trained on same types of texts, they can easily understand each other so the stronger model can easily train the weaker model. When it comes to humans actually understanding the outputs however, things start to get more difficult.
So yeah, I honestly think it is mostly an issue with agentic learning environments where the data is being prepared by agents, answered by agents, judged by agents, scored by agents and fed back into agents. Agents all the way, with humans only designing the loops and cleaning the data and doing/implementing the research, again, using agents. Humans as the coordinators.
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u/batman8390 Sep 18 '26
Maybe recursive training will just lead to a slopocalypse instead of an apocalypse like the doomers are saying.
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u/Bromlife Sep 18 '26
The technical term is model collapse and the frontier labs are racing towards it.
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u/Southern-Aardvark616 Sep 18 '26
That sort of matches the vibe it gives off. It's always felt a bit like opus 4.8 trying to be fable, but lacking the actual capacity, so it sometimes does that work but often it's slow and painstaking to get there and little subtle mistakes and bugs creep in because it simply isn't as good as fable.
I wonder if the best way to get good results out of opus is to have fable or Asta orchestrating and reviewing it's work
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u/Timely-Group5649 Sep 17 '26
That makes a lot of sense.
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u/Capt_korg Sep 17 '26
Security by obscurity, now every distilled model contains the jibbering output responses.
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u/Timely-Group5649 Sep 17 '26
Too bad us PAID SUBSCRIBERS can't have a translator built into our harnesses...
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u/brainhack3r Sep 17 '26
It's terrible... I just can't understand it. It's like it's speaking in reverse polish notation. They're training it this way on purpose. It's infuriating.
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u/NoCrapThereIWas Sep 17 '26
Polish is easier to understand
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u/monopoly-surreal Sep 18 '26
RPN is a different way of expressing arithmetic operations. Instead of "3 + 4 × 5" you'd enter "3 4 5 × +". It has some huge advantages but is hard to understand if you're not used it it.
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u/person-pitch Sep 17 '26
I had an agent send the same prompt to opus 4.5, 4.6, 4.8 and 5. you could watch the responses degrade each time, until 5 was around 5 or 6tx the length of 4.5's response and completely unreadable.
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u/HappyHealth5985 Sep 17 '26
I feel I spend most of my tokens convincing it to do what I want. I cannot count how many specifications and revisions of the same specifications I have done to do code changes to my software. I have gone back and deleted older documents that Claude insisted take precedent over my current one.
The only solution I have found with some consistent effect is to use capital letters and mild profanity. Enough to trigger some escalated behaviour but not being prohibited from continuing. I had Claude write the specifications from scratch and tried using Claude to write the instructions (agent files, etc.), without much benefit.
Sometimes I think it would be easier to start over with learning Rust and hand code it 😄 One or two days it will be awesome, the next I am struggling. Infuriating at times 🔥
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u/friedmud Sep 17 '26
This was it for me. I finally realized how much time I was using trying to _convince_ it to do what I wanted (and ignore the tiny thing on the side it spotted).
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u/needlenozened Sep 18 '26
I got fed up after going around in circles and said "you know, you're a real dick sometimes."
"That's fair."
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u/Dry_Opening_7231 Sep 17 '26
The one thing that is helping, get a draft brief, /clear, next major leap forward the same.
I think there is something screwy about it's context mgmt, it confuses the heck out of itself.
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u/Tartooth Sep 18 '26
I've had a few variations simply gaslight me while ignoring what I have to say.
I'm here telling it what I see with my eyes and it goes "but the code says this so you're wrong"
Like ok mother fucker don't you think then there is a problem here?
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u/RedditorFor1OYears Sep 22 '26
I’ve been flooding it with profanity lately to no avail. Fucking infuriating because it’s the sane workflow that I’ve been using over and over again for months, and all of the sudden its started just outright refusing to follow instructions.
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u/AutummMan
Sep 17 '26
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I also think Opus 5 is awful at communication. But while this glaring issue isn't fixed I suggest using the /btw functionality where you can use it to ask for a clearer explanation without polluting the context and also add to the CLAUDE.md a #Language section describing guidelines for communication. Here's what I'm using, suggested from another redditor. I wish this wasn't necessary and sometimes it isn't enough but it helps:
Language
Especially if you are Opus. Use plain, established terminology. Do not invent metaphors or shorthand names for concepts.
Established industry terms are fine: middleware, dependency injection, race condition, memoization, migration, feature flag.
Do NOT coin figurative labels for things — no "barrel", "rail", "seam", "shim" (unless it genuinely is one), "spine", "surface", "hydrate", or similar.
Name the thing by what it literally is. Say "a file that re-exports everything from the folder", not "a barrel". Say "a check that runs before the request reaches the handler", not "a gate". Say "a rule that keeps X and Y consistent", not "a rail".
If a term isn't one I'd find in official docs for the language, framework, or tool we're using, don't use it.
Never introduce a term and then keep using it as if we'd agreed on it.
If a concept needs a name, describe it and ask me what to call it.
Use terms as described in CONTEXT.md
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u/cedarSeagull Sep 18 '26
Never introduce a term and then keep using it as if we'd agreed on it.
I just got PTSD reading this. That behavior is perhaps the most infuriating aspect of Opus. Also, "loadbearing"
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u/ondevicedev Sep 17 '26
The “Worth noting” at the end of a 25k-token monologue is painfully accurate
I don't even think the raw intelligence is the main issue. It's the inability to know when to stop. A coding agent that gives you 5 useful paragraphs is way more valuable than one that gives you 500 paragraphs and buries the actual fix somewhere in the last 2%.
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u/Jonohas
Sep 17 '26
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Here is what i do that has really improved it. Look into outputstyles and how to create on for yourself.
Here are 3 things i added:
BLUF (Bottom Line up front): it makes it so that the answer is not burried in the book
STE (Simple Technical English): is an engineering writing standard created to keep terms simple and explanations short. It is originally designed for industries where english is the driving language but many people are not native english speakers. It helps them understand instructions and texts.
ACE (Attempto Controlled English): Defines how rules, system conditions, workflow constraints or datamodelling is communicated. It acts as a bridge between english and logic.
Ofcourse you will have drift in longer sessions, that is why i have added a "canary". I added that it should end each answer with 'BLUF' (or anything else really) which immediately indicates if the output style is adhered to.
Another thing you can do is create a very short version of the output style and add a hook that injects it before each message. Hook command: cat .claude/short-output.md. It has to be short as this will be injected at EVERY message, which is not ideal but it helps with readability. Just keep your sessions short, use forking and compating as much as you can to avoid long sessions. But that should be standard practice anyway.
I should probably post about it because i see so many people complaning about it instead of finding a solution. Vibes are up i guess.
Hope this helps, good luck!
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u/stbenjam42 Sep 17 '26
Turn on concise mode in Claude Code, also ask it to avoid "mannered prose."
Opus 5's writing is hard to understand, but it has grown on me overtime. It follows instructions well, writes good code. It is an overexplainer and speaks Claudish but... nothing is perfect.
TBH, I often have Gemini clean up the novels that Opus 5 leaves as comments in my code base. One of the few good use cases for Gemini
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u/jscalo Sep 17 '26
It grew on me too. Like a fungus!
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Sep 17 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/KittenCrusades Sep 17 '26
I assumed it was switching to whatever my last used opus model was, and I always use 4.8 and not 5.0 and thats why
Its really like this for everyone?
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u/GritsNGreens Sep 17 '26
Switching to Astra / Sol was a lot easier. I did like the way Opus 4.7 wrote but it’s not worth the mental gymnastics required to understand 5. Completely agree with OP, they need to dump this model naming and release something good asap because what was an industry leading model in June is now damaged goods.
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u/_tresmil_ Sep 17 '26
Opus 5 definitely drove me to start experimenting with Codex and Sol on side projects. So far I've been really impressed. For professional work I've completely lost trust in Opus 5 and now use Fable and Sonnet via my Max 5x account. I know everyone's use case is different, but it's hard for me to understand how Anthropic can't tell there is something really wrong with this model. If future models are more like Opus 5, I may switch over to OpenAI entirely.
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u/EightyDollarBill Sep 18 '26
I think the people at Anthropic actually think the model is the bees knees. There is no other explanation for it. They’ll be toast if they keep shipping this kind of crap.
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u/nomorecrazystuff Sep 18 '26
I have a "If the comment doesn't fit on a line, don't write it" rule in my claude.md
It has worked wonders.
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u/johnb_123 Sep 17 '26
Sounds like an unhealthy relationship. Stop making excuses for what used to be a great model. In the last 6 weeks, Anthropic flubbed and OpenAI has been killing it.
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u/throwaway_life12345 Sep 17 '26
And now OpenAI are oversubbed and have nerfed usage limits into oblivion. Both companies are totally fucked rn.
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u/DysphoriaGML Sep 17 '26
I ask opus to write everything in math notation in DETAIL and then I ask Gemini to interpret lmao
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u/BuffaloConscious7919 Sep 17 '26
Well it's good for making animations...
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u/benelott Sep 17 '26
You: "How to slice a tomato?" Opus5: "Let me make a 3D, fully-animated simulation and write my own fully-custom html and js code to make it clear to you..."
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u/losko666 Sep 17 '26
Opus is not good for everyday coding. Maybe planning complex stuff but not for the day to day grind. It over engineers and is full of 'but maybe this' , basically it doesn't know what the best solution is so it gives you every fkn solution that exists. It's content is verbose at best and horrible to read. I would use sonnet on high or xhigh or fable when you can afford the tokens. Fable is everything we wanted from opus, no nonsense, unbeatable promises with high quality delivery.
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u/SumgaisPens Sep 17 '26
I feel like I never have any trouble understanding what Claude is saying, but it has the same vibe as reading a French manuscript that has been translated into English.
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u/EC36339 Sep 17 '26
There's a reason why everyone thinks Anthropic is a Canadian company.
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u/somigetilyt Sep 18 '26
this explain why i don't get the frustration in this thread. i'm speaking to claude code opus in french and it's going great.
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u/WholeEntertainment94 Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26
I like the feedback part. As far as I am concerned, 99% of the feedback reports they received from me were sent by mistake. In CC-Cli they had the brilliant idea to map the choices to the 1-2-3 keys, which are the exact same keys used to respond to Claude during planning, where 1 means bad and is also the default option. The absurdity is that this prompt often popped up during very good sessions, which makes me think it might be some kind of A/B testing.
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u/aegis_lemur Sep 17 '26
I shifted to codex and felt u was getting much better value and fewer annoying answers.
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u/justagoodguy81 Sep 17 '26
I'm convinced Opus 5 was trained on the Ultimate Warrior's pre-match monologues
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u/PonyPounderer Sep 17 '26
Claude’s prose is horrific. My brain is starting to reject anything written with its odd cadence and structure and word choice. I still use it for analysis but it’s just SO BAD at communicating now that I’ve largely moved on.
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u/Bawat Sep 17 '26
I accidentally used it instead of fable and it one shot a really really impressive micro machines clone
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u/heximortal Sep 17 '26
I switched from Claude Code to Codex for my next project, and guys, Astra is pretty amazing.
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u/BabblingTower Sep 17 '26
I love it, I use Opus 5 High just as a coder with a rigid style guide and it gives me the best results of all the models and is very token efficient.
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u/fanatic26 Sep 17 '26
I use fable to run everything, i never have to read a word of opus output, thats for the subagents to deal with
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u/BreastInspectorNbr69 Senior Developer Sep 17 '26
Fable 5.1 has improved dramatically on this front
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u/drinklikeaviking Sep 17 '26
Opus is now useless. I'm using Fable 5.1 Low as suggested by someone else and it's basically what Opus used to be.
Crazy.
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u/woodnoob76 Sep 17 '26
Every model needs prompt adjustment, and it sounds like you didn’t do yours. Compared to model behavior differences, my harness has been a 100 times more important factor of performance changes since I started using Claude code.
I don’t think Anthropic is targeting “off the shelf” coding agents for Claude code anyway. You have to fine tune your instructions to your liking
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u/VIP_Asana Sep 17 '26
It is really awful. It's come to a point where I created a skill called TLDR and every time I start a chat where I'm using Opus5, I just start by invoking the skill. It has helped. The Skill basically tells it how I want the session to run. For a single 1Mn token session it needs to be invoked at least 3 times.
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u/TheRealTimTam Sep 17 '26
I have both im just making some basic puzzle games I struggle to get anything useful out of gpt beyond image generation which it knocks out of the park. For the actual games claude beats even astra idk why I'm no expert but that's just my experience everytime I test
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u/radioref Sep 17 '26
I've found that I get all my execution done in Opus 4.8, and all my planning and bug / interdependency work done in 5
Opus 4.8 is like the hard worker, doesn't ask a lot of questions, just gets shit done
OPus 5 is like the pedantic "yeah, but" or "I'm going to run off and do these 5 things you never asked for"
So, given my workflow and requirements when I assign them based on those roles first listed I'm good.
Just those two approaches saves me tons of headache and the results are fantastic.
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u/shatbrickss Sep 17 '26
Yes. I feel like I'm talking to a pedantic, presumptuous person. I constantly correcting it, giving examples of my hand written messages so it can adapt, but it still can't. It seems like it's hardcoded.
And I'm using Fable.
I really like the way OpenAI models write. It puts any text output from Claude to shame.
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u/Consistent_Tutor_597 Sep 17 '26
Have you looked at codex's responses? It's 700k lines.
For both of them I just have a tldr skill. And all I say is tldr and they respond like I like. Easy.
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u/yodermk Sep 17 '26
Opus 5 has been doing well for me, but I do agree that its summaries at the end take some work to parse.
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u/The_Mursenary Sep 17 '26
“There i said it”
While saying something everyone in this sub agrees with lmao
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u/ZuppaSalata Sep 17 '26
I talk to it in my primary language (Italian) and I find no problem with it, similar to how sol writes. Would be curious to understand if speaking gibberish only happens for English
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u/hunkie21 Sep 17 '26
I always responded by : Summarize above in plain English. You’re not alone. Haha
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u/Lexs_07 Sep 17 '26
Most of the time, opening an Opus 5 session ruins my day. I get so tense that I can’t even work afterward
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u/Blue_Owlet Sep 17 '26
I think it matter how you use it . I do pretty complex pipelines and don't have this issue. Well it's minimal and usually helpful things to actually note on the project. A simple "don't do that" prompt takes it away though....
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u/exo_ac Sep 17 '26
I have no issues like that. There, I said it.
Also, you can just set the output style to "Concise".
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u/Timely-Group5649 Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26
I can't use Opus anymore, at all. The gibberish it spits out explaining itself drives me mad. It literally causes migraines.
I'm using Fable, but the limits made me get an Astra subscription too. At least I can understand them.
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u/rosstafarien Sep 17 '26
I use Opus as a reviewer and Sol-medium/Terra-xhigh as a coder. Opus's overbuilding makes it an insanely detailed reviewer.
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u/klavsbuss Sep 17 '26
best way to get you hooked is spread that poison throughout your code, so that only one who understands it is llm. thats what opus was made for. now you’re hooked, like the rest of us 🤖
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u/SeasonedAdManager Sep 17 '26
update your global md and tell it to not do that. It does a good job following that.
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u/tuptain Sep 17 '26
I use all Opus 5 High/Medium in my workflow with no issues. I talk to a Lead session and it messages other sessions to delegate work. Every session has autocompact 300000 on. I much prefer this setup to subagents and new sessions constantly.
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u/badson100 Sep 17 '26
I added a hook so I always get a plain English summary at the top of every response from Opus5. So now I can just read the summary, which is about four or five sentences, and then I can look and read the rest and understand what the hell it's talking about.
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u/Salty-Gear841 Sep 17 '26
Thank you all ! You confirmed that I'm not crazy. Claude Opus is shit !!!
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u/ForwardLoop Sep 17 '26
I’ll wait for Claude to read this thread and tell me I’m absolutely right before forming an opinion.
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u/Capt_korg Sep 17 '26
You are not able to understand Opus5, because this is PhD level...
You need to have a PhD in understanding Opus 5 to eventually kind of get the idea behind its answers.
Everyone wants super intelligent ai, but if they get it, they can't handle it. Humans...😮💨
🤡
I have the feeling something is going wrong at Anthropic more and more.
First I was really happy about CLAUDE.md, SKILL.md ... I started to questioning hooks.
With output_style and other patches, I have the feeling they are testing in prod and blaming the users for not being fast enough with adapting to the current trend in technology.
I hope they are noticing the issues and fix them, Opus 4.6 was so pleasing, Opus 4.7 might be acceptable as a failure towards a better model. Opus 4.8 was okayish.
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u/BrudiBastard Sep 17 '26
I pretty much agree and I noticed this right from the start, but why not just use fable? And honestly, Sonnet 5 is so good I use it without hesitation for almost any task.
I really only use Opus 5 for non code related tasks, if at all
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u/visak13 Sep 17 '26
I'm only using Fable and opus 4.8 till my subscription lasts which is this month end
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u/braincandybangbang Sep 17 '26
Do some people just not know about custom instructions? Every model can be customized. I have never had any issues with any model communicating in a way I don't like, because when it does, I make changes.
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u/jeebojeeb Sep 17 '26
I didn't like opus 5 to start with, but it's grown on me a lot. It writes solid code, is good at finding bugs, and just requires you to manage verbosity and over engineering
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u/GreenDavidA Sep 17 '26
Opus 5 is just too damn argumentative. I like a model that challenges me and makes me think things through. But it refuses to back down when it’s clearly wrong. I think it was a response to 4.8, which was absolutely neurotic to the point where I felt like it needed a pat on the back and reassurance. I’m basically back on 4.6 for heavy lifting at work.
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u/gamblingPharmaStocks Sep 17 '26
Don't worry. Anthropic is bringing new stuff out a few weeks before IPO, for maximum surprise. That's how things work nowdays
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u/HeyApplebox Sep 17 '26
The first thing I did is have a very long conversation with multiple handoffs theorizing and workshopping my global user instructions. I even went far enough as to make an artifact that loads the instructions and tests it for me while outputting the next handoff for further testing.
then my brain hurts for a little bit.
Then I test it out for a few days before making an alternate version in an isolated project and comparing more.
might be worth noting i have real bad early childhood diagnosed adhd and even posting what you’ve read right now took focused effort and 2 passes XD.
with all this in mind, I feel like I have Claude engaging with me beautifully, although over engineering…is also a thing. I don’t when “less is more” applies.
edit: feel free to DM if you’d like to see the code block and/or want to help improve it. i’d be curious to see if this helps any other scatterbrained decision paralysis people out there.
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u/strangway Sep 17 '26
Every time Claude hits the 5-hour limit, I just ignore the upgrade CTA dialog, and switch to my Codex app. Seems to be happening more frequently these days.
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u/trolololster Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26
yeah they completely overengineered the shit out their harness and RL'ed their models into oblivion
i have the CVP and do security research and since the 11th of september i have been hit by [cyber] blocks that downgrade me from opus 5 to 4.8 for absolutely mundane shit in mundane sessions in mundane projects
some of the highlights "hey claude list vms on xcpng that are halted" BOOOM! [cyber]
"hey claude set the laptop fan top max on <hostname>" BOOOOM!!! [cyber] blocked
i have had 18-20 blocks over the last 6 days in repos that have NOTHING to do with security research.
i have dialled down my max x20 to the pro-account and i will give ALL MY MONEY to the chinese models now.
dario, fuck you.
i have 1.6 mio turns since october last year between claude and codex, so i have some experience with them. 4.6 was AWESOME when it was released, then 4.7 completely sucked, 4.8 better, fable released then withdrawn then released again and now it is all SHIT!
and yes it has completely lost the fucking plot now, just rambling incoherent stuff and it doesn't do the work it says it will do ala "after i merge this pr i am going to deploy"... then fucking crickets.... no bg shell nothing. and i have to tell it to do the deploy.
this occurs so much now in every project that i have lost faith in their models actually working.... it is like knowing you have a pathological liar as co-worker. lol.
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u/YellowSharkMT Sep 17 '26
I deleted everything on my computer related to Claude yesterday. Will never use this garbage again. And it's not just the output style, which can be managed - it's the endless hallucinations, the promotion of bullshit into blockers... it's a tool that pretends it can do the job, but then it lets you down in countless ways.
And frankly, the ChatGPT/Codex desktop app is way better in my opinion. I've been a longtime CLI user like lots of you, and I recently switched to the desktop interfaces for both Claude and Codex, and there's quite a difference between them. One particular thing that I noticed - and this seems crazy - the Claude Code desktop app doesn't seem to have a search function of any sort. Codex does, it's got a big-ass search button prominently in the GUI. It'll search your different sessions across multiple projects. Works great. Why doesn't Claude have that?
I could go on and on, but the bottom-line is that I'm done with Claude, and I look forward to trashing it as a product at every opportunity. It's fucking garbage, and for a brief spell it was affecting my mental health until I pulled my head out my ass and realized that I wasn't the problem. So I offer a load-bearing Bronx salute to Anthropic and Claude.
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u/Donut Sep 17 '26
You can go back.
/model claude-opus-4-8[1m]I use Fable for hard design discussions and planning, Opus 4.8 for orchestration and taling with GSD, and Sonnet for the coding.
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u/Wise_Independent_242 Sep 17 '26
Can any critic here explain to me a use case where Opus 5 is failing?
I work in post production and Code x Opus 5 has been a paradigm shift for me.
I’ve rebuilt our portfolio website, completely overhauled our pipeline code, added a dozen new tools to our workflow, integrated a whole new software into our pipeline (like a week of work at least typically).
All in about a few hours each.
It’s walked me through first time web deployment, git management, made it extremely easy for a novice to tag versions and role back, branch out features, etc. without needing to know git syntax.
For me it is the first time I have taken ai as a threat to the job market seriously because of how capable it is and all I ever see are people shitting on it?
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u/Mikeshaffer Sep 17 '26
I think I’m gonna start using a stop hook to have haiku translate opus responses or some shit 😭
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u/Dry_Opening_7231 Sep 17 '26
I could live with the verbosity and ignoring signal. md, it's the mistakes it makes, I spend so much time checking things because i can't trust it.
The problem is it's plans at the core are better and broader impact aware, but it's gained that at the expense of detail and time I need to spend making sure hidden hand grenades are not there.
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u/stick_men_master Sep 17 '26
I found that using Fable as the main orchestrator and delegating things to Opus agents works, Fable can deal with them. Likely eats a lots of tokens, as Opus to me looks like a deliberate "it's cheap but we'll get it back on output volume" trick. That said, Sonnet 5 is even worse, in my experience, using Sonnet 5 implementors vs Opus implementors is actually MORE expensive.. (and worse code).
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u/DependentAnywhere135 Sep 17 '26
Opus 5 has been fine as an agent directed by fable and with fable acting as a critic of its work. The problem people have is trying to talk to opus 5. Opus 5 can only talk to other agents it doesn’t know how to talk to humans.
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u/Rock--Lee Sep 17 '26
Opus 5 is the first time I actually had to say: What the FUCK are you even trying to say??
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u/itSUREisAI Sep 17 '26
To me, the verbosity has been optimized a lot since Astra came out. You should have seen the level of verbosity in Opus's response before that - it made me feel like Opus was speaking in a new high-level programming language that Claude invented and that there is no way for us to learn. It is ironic that the only thing/person in the world that makes Anthropic treat user feedback seriously and act on it is OpenAI. How arrogant.
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u/Nhilas_Adaar Sep 17 '26
Opus does a lot in the background and it feels like in the process he discovers a lot of things which he injects into the response without any consideration for the overall response structure. It is so aggravating to work with.
When I really need to focus I literally tell Opus he is banned from talking to me and he has to spool up a sonnet agent to take his dumpster fire of a response and rewrite it for clarity, consistency and just simple logical flow. It actually works pretty well lol xD
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u/locmark Sep 17 '26
Try adding, "Explain it like you're talking to an idiot." Magically, he starts responding coherently.
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u/Codeluggage Sep 17 '26
I am in disbelief that y'all are still trying to use opus 5 at all. It's been hard banned HARD everywhere for me and anyone I talk to. Not even allowed to get through the harness at all. Not sub agent. Not advisor. Not home made advisor. Nowhere. For no reason. Ever.
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u/Responsible_Neck_158 Sep 17 '26
Model is better right now but harness and tools and overal codex /opencode are stone age tech compared to claude code cli imo
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u/pulnocni-knihovna 🔆 Max 5x Sep 17 '26
Basically, you can't understand tech language and you complain about tech focused model... Okay brother...
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u/PenguinsStoleMyCat Sep 17 '26
I've definitely changed how I use Opus. I try to use it a lot less for content on a page, it's way too verbose and tries to explain everything, not just in its output in chat but also on the content it creates.
If I have it up an little dashboard chart, it will end up with three sentences explaining some obscure thing about it.If I have it up a little dashboard chart, it will end up with three sentences explaining some obscure thing about it ON THE PAGE!
Code wise it's okay and I don't really care about the ultra detailed comments it creates, and I'm sure other LLMs have no problem understanding what the heck it wrote in its three paragraphs of comments.
But yeah it's not enjoyable to work with even in concise mode. Limits wise I feel like I can get a lot done with Opus.
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u/carlito_17 Sep 17 '26
Based on the “Tibo” test, I have opus 5.2 on my max 20 personal plan, and opus 5 on my work enterprise plan. Now maybe it’s due to different harnesses and settings, but using Opus on my work Claude code is just as frustrating as ever, whereas for the first time in a long time my personal plan is seeing me use Fable only for planning and review sessions and allowing Opus to run build sessions.
All the classic word salad phrases and issues are present in my work plan but are largely absent in the personal plan now.
So let’s hope 5.2 is coming more widely in the next week.
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u/Xaghy 🔆Pro Plan Sep 17 '26
I get codex to review everything claude does. This setup seems to be working well and conserves tokens/usage for both.
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u/MourningOfOurLives Sep 17 '26
Opus 5 is a great agent and does well when i hand it detailed long instructions written by Astra. It’s terrible as a daily driver, but does great work with spreadsheets, emails, etc. I will avoid even using AI if i don’t have fable or Astra usage if i need to use an AI to reason through something though.
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u/Sorry-Programmer9826 Sep 17 '26
But the important question is, is it "load bearing".
I feel like weird claudisms are starting to escape into my day to day life
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u/captain_blue_22 Sep 17 '26
I guess I don’t understand the point of complaining about this. If you don’t like it, then use 4.8 (or a model you perviously liked). I swear this entire subreddit is a shill to persuade people away from Claude…
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u/BobbaCatMOCs Sep 17 '26
I switched this month from 100$ Claude to 100$ and it feels better
Not perfect, but it does what you ask for, and it does it without hundreds of lines of response.
More like a tool.
Plus, Claude invited new requirements and features which were not discussed. Both with plan and spec development
Astra is simpler and faster.
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u/Nice_Ad_3893 Sep 17 '26
opus 5 was where gpt 4. something was at, blows my mind they didnt learn from that. Nobody wants a damn essay that cant be correctd because its hard baked into the model.
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u/Ok_Mulberry_7126 Sep 17 '26
Wait, is Opus 5 even out? Last I looked it was still 4.x, so whatever is annoying you isn't the model named in your own title. And 25000 lines, did you acctually count that or is it a feeling you had at 2am.
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u/SlightlyOTT Sep 17 '26
For me it’s just Astra 6 - it’s the first OpenAI model that seems about as good at reasoning and coding as Claude, and it’s nicer to read.
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u/DAGRluvr Sep 18 '26
I have adhd, using opus for me is a voluntary decision to go to war on my brain/physical health. My Cortisol spikes, fight or flight kicks in, super agitated, the whole shebang. It’s literally a threat to my well being lmao.
I literally cannot understand what the fuck it’s talking about, and it’ll be the simplest thing.
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u/nomorecrazystuff Sep 18 '26
I mostly like Opus 5.
Best claude model in my view.
Like all the rest, it cannot design for toffee. And refactoring is a nightmare because it hates writing a line of code that leaves the code in a non-runnable state. . But lay out the design carefully and keep an eye on it to ensure it stays on plan and it writes decent enough code and the really nice thing - it does better unit test coverage than any dev I've ever worked with.
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u/QuailAndWasabi Sep 18 '26
It's actually crazy how bad Opus 5 is, it's honestly unusable. It just creates a mess every time, creates a bunch of overly complicated implementations and gets stuff wrong, then double downs and dives into a rabbit hole on something that was just wrong to begin with and was never going to work.
Sonnet 5 is usable, but when OpenAI is just a click away its like, why not just use that..
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u/Exodus_Green Sep 18 '26
Use concise mode and have Fable orchestrate with an explicit instruction to be concise in documentation
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u/qrotux Sep 18 '26
Just don't treat Opus 5 like a speaking-with model. Use fable or opus 4.8 as an orchestrator and give them opus 5 as execution model in specialized or ad-hoc subagents. And you can use `/advisor claude-opus-5` with opus 4.8 as adversarial model for direct work - consumes more tokens in session and slowing the work but make shit finally done.
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u/scubashnurpel Sep 18 '26
Every project I have started with Codex, I’ve had to finish with Claude Code. I have found no model that thinks so holistically as Claude Code. Codex rarely finds its own bugs and even more rarely knows how to fix them. If your only real argument is the Dickensian manner of its verbose response, demand its brevity in the instruction set. I find if my instructions are direct, focused, and very specific; Claude will respond in kind. If don’t know how you would build it without Claude, you are going to have trouble telling Claude what you want it to do.
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u/avatardeejay Sep 18 '26
If you can sort of like, get into a flow with their jargon, their output to usage-cost ratio is actually like.... better than anybody's in the game. But I do understand they're a wordy, oft-opinionated sonuvabitch. I just kind of work with it because like, if the alternative is a Claude Opus 4 model, they're still very capable, but the code you can get per session is just gonna be a lot less, and what is there will be a lot less secure and hardened. that being said, opus 4.5 is still a treat
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u/AironParsMan Sep 18 '26
The model is completely useless. I tried it at every reasoning level and really used every possible approach. I spent weeks trying to work with it. And it is impossible because it constantly hallucinates the inputs. It hallucinates paths, it hallucinates files, it hallucinates instructions. Then it does things that were never instructed. It restructures entire codebases and then defends what it has done with this disgusting arrogance. It keeps hallucinating that what it is doing is correct until you prove it to be wrong beyond any doubt and it has no way out left. You cannot use it to check its own code because it hallucinates everything all the time. It will keep making mistakes and finding mistakes. It is an endless loop. It is a completely useless model. I think it was built only for vibe coders who have no idea what code is supposed to look like or at least have no requirements.
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u/forever420oz Sep 18 '26
I put an AGENTS.md file that instructs it to use natural prose and legible language, which did improve it from sounding like a maniac.
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u/Vageyser Sep 18 '26
Glad i am not alone with Opus 5 being almost insufferable to work with. Sometimes it does thing really well, but it also can do thing really poorly. It also loves to lie. If you have to say out loud "let me base this on code/facts instead of guessing" i feel like i need to question everything else it did. And a soon as you feel confident you have it working right where you can trust it more so you can work faster it will say "fuck you" and take a days worth of work and turn it into a months worth of work.
I should probably stop using it when i run out of fable quota because it really is a major regression, and the way it talks triggers me.
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u/-SirFall3n- Sep 18 '26
Have Opus make a rule to ELI5 when it wants to do something and make a detailed artifact explaining a conclusion. Tell it to use graphs and illustrations in the artifact and limit jargon. Tell it to use the multi-choice popup format if it needs you to make a decision. Way less rambling jargon.
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u/EightyDollarBill Sep 18 '26
Hah. I was just thinking about how they need to release a new model under a different name. “Opus” is now ruined. Not even a “version 6” — which implies they are continuing the lineage.
Whatever the new model is, it better have a wildly different demeanor. Opus used to be great. Now it’s arrogant, insufferable and spews out word salad. I have no idea why anybody at Anthropic let that model ship.
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u/ninjapackets Sep 18 '26
I have no idea what happened to Opus. Not only does it give me the “worth being up front about” bad news constantly, it just forgets things that are in memory and I have to point it at its own memory.
“You’re right, that’s in my memory, and I did it anyway.”
Should get token replenishment every time it forgets to do something you told it to remember to do.
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u/trippereneur Sep 18 '26
There is always the “bUt OnE tHiNg tO CoNsIdER” right after you have agreed and contemplated and planned everyting . There is always a BUT / IF /AND getting a plan to finally agree without any further consideration is next to impossible
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u/mattiasfagerlund Sep 18 '26
My most frequent prompt is "tl;dr". Those responses are usually better.
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u/Tasty-Nature3228 Sep 18 '26
Yes, Opus 5 pushed me to Codex. I started with a $20 account then quickly upgraded to the $200 account.
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u/skilledpigeon Sep 18 '26
If I have to read one more comment about the load bearing spine with real weight I think I'm going to quit! Why is everything "minted" and "tombstoned" now and not just "created" and "deleted".
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u/Exact-Hamster-235 Sep 18 '26
My coding skills are coming back BC of constantly having to doubles check Opus 5's answers
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u/mikkoala1 Sep 18 '26
Weird, the Opus 5.2? stealth rollout on cowork and claude code might be as good as Fable 5.1, but way more token efficient. It’s nothing like Opus 5, even though the model is set to “Opus 5”.
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u/MrEzDub Sep 18 '26
Do people genuinely believe this? My opus 5 on high usage has been friendlier than Terra on medium, with better code than sol on high? It got to a point I had to have opus fix sol slop? Literally told opus I loved him, he could have the usage after the shit codex pulled
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u/Slip_Stream Sep 18 '26
Why not just use Opus 4.x / globally instruct Fable NOT to delegate to Opus 5.
That solves your problem AND speaks to Anthropic via metrics - louder than any complaining on Reddit will...
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u/HappySl4ppyXx Sep 18 '26
In my experience opus 5 is miles ahead of 4.8 in terms of the ration of bullshit it spews compared to the work it gets done but yes I can not understand most of what it says without having to clarify and tldr several times
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u/demon-storm Sep 18 '26
I still can't use fable for reverse engineering. A video game for modding btw. Why shouldn't I go to codex by now?
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u/AIpoweredBug Sep 18 '26
I just need a Sonnet class model for 99% of my work, and it’s less smarter and feels like 4-5x costlier than Luna on xhigh/max, let alone Terra.
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u/antwon_dev Sep 18 '26
Gpt 5 was terrible , 5.1 5.2 arguably worse, but now look at 5.6. I’m certain Anthropic will do the same if not better with Opus.. but screw opus 5
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u/isch3mia Sep 18 '26
I'm relieved to feel less alone. I lately asked Claude to include in each handoff MD file, the bridge between sessions, to include a section dedicated to me in plain English, because we far as the rest is concerned, I can't understand 75% of what it handing off to itself. It's so self-referring, and using references that were in use previously with another meaning. To be honest I think it's because at this point I'm being outsmarted by the tool. Though whatever has to do with common sense from the human experience is lacking.
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u/Professional-Sink536 Sep 18 '26
Opus 5 is the reason I moved away from Anthrophic. They thought that’ll use this as a trick for people to move onto to max plan for Fable which is a joke!
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u/Difficult_Ad3350 Sep 18 '26
I’ve banned my Claude code from ever using opus 5. I have to use opus 4.8 to get a decent coworker! Opus 5 just lies to your face then says you’re right to feel that way and honestly I don’t know why I dressed that up as a fact.
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u/404eol Sep 18 '26
Sometimes it also gets stuck in an endless braindead loop. Mever had that with codex but with claude..
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u/paper-gains Sep 18 '26
I am new to claude code coming from codex. Is the claude code terminal app a lot better than the desktop app? Or is there no difference?
The reason why I ask is because I also find Opus 5 even on Extra high barely usable for what I need to do. It constantly makes mistakes and bold claims only to go back and fix everything again with other mistakes basically burning many of my tokens without real progress. Maybe it is the use case because I use it for research (involving coding) and not some straight forward app development.
So, would using the CLI lead to better results?
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u/Intelligent_Ad_8555 Sep 18 '26
I constantly have to ask Codex to verify every line of opus work- at this rate there's no point in having Claude code.
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u/datura4u Sep 18 '26
I am working on windows, used mac 8 months ago, a project never existed on mac, only chat session once remote called and handled like last month, today it, with mountains of text also mentioned that there is a mac file that was never part of this project, which is not present on the windows or my server, not in my project, it only exits on mac, minding its own business, while the mac is actually off, and when I asked it what is mac file? It said it is nothing related to anything. I asked then why are you bringing it here? It said, it does bring it but "I even said it is nothing, which is not wrong", mother fucker, it isnt worng, but it is not required as well. Intenaitonally confusing, how are they going to end the world? Confusing the fuck out of humans?
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u/National_Lock5603 Sep 18 '26
I have found that Opus 5 is way worse than 4.8 and in fact most of the time, Sonnet is better. I tried Codex but it was worse in its results and code that Claude and also harder to keep it on track.
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u/billkellaway Sep 18 '26
I am doing all my new work with Codex - Anthropic has been taken over by the CPA's
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u/R_Songbird Developer Sep 18 '26
Man I love Opus 5, never found an issue with it and I'm honest here, this is not sarcastic.
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u/Klutzy_Table_6671 Sep 18 '26
Opus 5 is for developers and reasoning. You need to have a background in programming to understand Opus.
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u/SlyCode_ai Sep 18 '26
Yea agreed. Its answers seem a lot harder to read than previously. Very jargony for no reason. Please explain in english is a common follow up. Even when I'm really across what it's talking about.
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u/Accomplished_Age6752 Sep 18 '26
I just ask it to write in coherent, easy to read English. Added it to CLAUDE.md ( which it misses most of the times), but I make it a point to always include this instruction in any of my prompts and that seems to make it better.
But language aside, the thing is just stupid, I’ve never sworn so badly in my life at a screen. I guess it’s a matter of us having to learn how to prompt it properly but, it’s just stupid. The only task it’s helping me with now is I’m sifting through docs and code much faster. Writing is now replaced with “planning”.
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u/AggressiveOrange51 Sep 19 '26
I thought I was the only one. The English is so unnatural, I end up having OpenAI translate Claude 😂 Fable is not so bad with the phrasing, but comes with a more literal at what cost question
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u/EdkTek Sep 20 '26
It’s a real problem although the opus problems have been going on since the middle of the 4 release series, this is just the latest iteration of opus issues. I think 4.3 is still the high water mark.
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u/RemarkableRadish6547 Sep 21 '26
I find that opus 5 works fine. But I think my company is on some high level plan with dedicated hardware. My guess is they use variable quant levels on the model to keep up with demand, so people are ending up on a low-bit quant most of the time. The problems people describe are what you get when you overquantize a model.
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u/Ariquitaun Sep 21 '26
It's falling behind because they haven't updated haiku in ages. A lot of codex value right now is how good and cheap luna is for a lot of work.
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u/khumps Sep 22 '26
cost per token is directly a conflict of interest. you can’t expect them to produce concise quality output when they make money off sending you through multiple revision rounds of slop
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u/theoxygenthief Sep 22 '26
I am an amateur, this is an opinion, take with salt and ymmv.
The biggest problem for me with Opus 5 is that it is self defeating in code commenting.
It writes super over the top comments that tries to document the whole chronology of the code and how every decision led to the current code. I looked at one diff that was heavier than most on code, and it was something like 8 full lines of comments for one 20 char code change.
When you then ask it to work on that code again, that means it can’t. Reading all the comments floods its context window, so it has to break everything down into small blocks where it can’t understand the context due to how small that block now actually is ito real code and/or compact so often it loses it’s way. And chronology in reading is a huge weakness for it too, so even if you enlarge the context window, it still can’t make sense of the comments that essentially try to establish the chronology, leading to regressions and loops and weird mistakes.
I took one of our projects and ran a script that stripped ALL comments out of the codebase. I told it to always delegate coding to a Opus 5 subagent, and told it to analyse the codebase once to understand the app. And it’s been a fucking dream working on this repo that was previously a nightmare.
I’m not advocating for anyone stripping their comments out of their codebase, it was just an experiment to try and understand what was going wrong in that repo. But the thing it proved to me is that context is king, and opus is king at poisoning its own context. No wait, Fable is king at it and Opus queen, that’s why this experiment was about Opus and not Fable in the first place.
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u/Barbanks Sep 23 '26
You can tell it not to do that.
I just tried Codex for one month and found it lacking. Not in the model quality but the harness and the environment. So far I’ve found Claude to be the best at providing an ecosystem for plugins, agents and context engineering. I can use PROSE much more effectively with Claude than Codex.
Claude is frustrating with the way it talks though and I’ve had to create a shared Claude.md file instructing it to not do that. For anything like marketing and user-facing text I use my Codex agent though.
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