Comment by usef-

2 hours ago

Weird how different people's experiences are. If it's making simple mistakes something must be wrong in your setup/context I assume? It's been solid for me, beyond the usual LLMisms that all models have. But I keep context pretty minimal.

Every model that comes out comes with a bunch of people saying "this one is actually dumb they were smart before" and I don't really get it. The models since Opus 4.5 have all been basically the same to me. Sometimes they do the wrong thing, so you have to steer and stop and correct them. Leaving them to operate on their own in no-human-in-the-loop harnesses often gets bad results. But if you single thread it, and keep your work targeted (you have to know what you want the thing to do!), clear your context, the models will do what you ask pretty reliably.

Statements like this typically come from working on the same setup and context using different models. I actually have that very experience now; I work on something security-adjacent so Fable often drops out, at which point Opus behaves like its lobotomized half-sibling. Pardon me the language, but I can't find a better example to be honest.

Agreed. Opus 5 is doing just fine, slightly better than 4.8. It's personality is insufferable, but I find myself catching fewer problems at code review. It generally understands my conventions and isn't so eager to accrue tech debt.