Fable 5 blocked request to research fly-fishing flies (lures)
I'm so disappointed with Fable 5. In my (personal, anecdotal) testing between Fable 5 and Opus, Fable 5 is basically the same exact model as Opus with a slightly improved system prompt or maybe a few more parameters. Fable 5 is just a little better at asking a few pointed questions upfront before starting the work, which is negated by good prompt writing/engineering.
Just now, I asked Fable to research fly fishing flies in regards to fishing flies (lures) in my area and got pushed back to Opus. I guess, because insects are biology? I tried to edit my prompt with the button in the popup message which tells me I was switched back to Opus, and it wouldn't even let me save the prompt unless I deleted the entire thing.
That's one example, but I have recently "tested" both models across chat, code, and cowork. In brand new chats, Fable still forgets things from the prompt or doesn't read the whole prompt. Fable still asks me questions about things I have specified in the prompt. Fable still fails to use relevant connectors/tools and skills. Fable still doesn't read a whole file I provide to it and only pulls out small snippets.
Lastly, the copyright restrictions drive me nuts. None of Anthropic's models, in my experience, can be trusted to synthesize or summarize the information in a source and particularly for longer ones. Due to this, I require claude to quote and cite all facts and claims it makes. But quotes are restricted to a one, single quote using handful of words PER SOURCE, even if said source is hundreds of pages long. This basically forces context loss (in terms of sources, not the model context) when using the Research tool or using subagents. I guess I haven't verified it, which I should, but Opus 4.8 says it cannot see the context of the research subagents or any subagents. It can only see the output from the subagent. So claude is relying on information that is unverifiable without going through and having the main agent read every source into it's own context, or me doing so manually. This completely negates using Research or subagents for any research usage.
I will admit I have not yet tested it for any EXTREME coding tasks like trying to oneshot an app, but I imagine some of the newly released open-source models will do as well or better than Fable 5. So I'm really wondering if paying $100/month (for 5x Max) is worth the faster speed vs the usage limits + the harness limits. So far, I've used an entire or nearly an entire session using Fable 5 in one (great) prompt several times. Not to be a downer (Mods, I can remove this if needed), but I am only really continuing to pay for my subscription in the hopes that I get my money back from Anthropic's pending lawsuit(s?) regarding usage limits. Also because it's a PITA to switch away.
Has anyone tested any of the more recently released open-weight models like Deepseek V4 Pro Max, GLM-5 or 5.2, MiniMax M3, NemoTron 3 Ultra, or etc. and their variations? If so, how do they compare to Opus 4.8 and/or Fable 5?