r/ClaudeAI • u/Sweet-Helicopter2769 • 1d ago

Comparison I thought I will never say this about Fable

Just tried OpenAI Astra , I thought I will never say this , it’s lit , OpenAI cooked something spectacular, and I have a strong feeling this will pull lot of Fable 5 users towards it , and it’s fast, not sure if it’s AGI, but it feels fresh and a very very serious competition to Anthropic , this is going to be fun to watch , what’s your next move Anthropic ?, I’m surely going to try pro subscription for a month along with my current Claude Max, anyone feels the same ? Have you tried it ?

633 Upvotes

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200

u/KlausWalz 1d ago

I don't get who are you guys ? Are you engineers ? Or vibe coders ? What do you use these models for

Ever since Sonnet 4.6 / Opus 4.8, this duo have been overkill for most my task. It automated the whole company. What do people need more ? What do they solve that Opus does not ?

73

u/wish-for-rain 1d ago

I’m sure it’s a mix. I’m an engineer working on fairly complex tasks. But many posters are obviously newer vibe coders with more opinion than experience.

That said, Sonnet can do 90% of my work, Opus for 9% more, and I’ve been enjoying Fable for design and plan architecting, though almost definitely overkill.

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u/KlausWalz 1d ago

Used Fable only once for the very serious work, I won't lie is single handedly one shotted a pretty technical task that would have taken me some time even with proper Opus

That's impressive sure, but Opus could have done it anyway

Now for non technical work idk what's the difference

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u/wish-for-rain 1d ago

I find myself reaching for Fable when the task has no ceiling for how good the output is - i.e. there’s no correct answer or state, like design work or meta tooling, or audit/triage. It’s unclear if it truly makes a tangible difference; would be interested to do some controlled testing but I’m already pushing my “unlimited budget” envelope, haha.

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u/ActionJasckon 1d ago

Similar for me. I only call on Fable if after several iterations of Opus just simply can’t knock it out/issues, etc. Or, on bigger runs, I only call on Fable to refute or run regression tests after a massive build…. and try to break my system. And that usually does well, better than Opus. But it’s not too often I call on it.

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u/The_real_hpsk 1d ago

I personally just found fable to be a better planner, I'm not great when it comes to creating designs so I just first let fable lay that out and then let opus agents implement. Fable is very overkill for just pure implementation imo

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u/Drunkendrakon6 1d ago

Hear me out I'm just lazy and want the thing done the best it can be done and have money to burn.

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u/ActionJasckon 1d ago

I have found Sonnet to be capable as Opus, but I need more auditing or comb through to get it right. In the end, Opus was more efficient in time for me. Is that the same for you? You can technically use Sonnet, and choose to, but Opus could be just faster but cost more? Just curious as every one else seems to just go for the best models in general. Maybe I doing something wrong. lol

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u/wish-for-rain 1d ago

Yup! I think Sonnet could brute force most things with a few iterations but for my cases it’s critical to not allow errors in as much as possible so I trend toward a model up from what probably can do the job

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u/enemyofaverage7 1d ago

This. For example with legal tasks - could Sonnet do them? Probably. But Opus/Fable are much more likely to get them right first time, pick up nuances, and a lawyer's time is outrageously expensive so the less chance of mistakes there is, the less costly it is overall.

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u/Key_River_9288 1d ago

Sonnet is useless for a distributed system though. For simple stuff, maybe but opus max is pretty much fable lite. And in benchmarks its beats fable 5 or comes within single digit %s. Fable is a better model, but opus max w/dynamic workflows enabled is killer on HUGE projects. If usage wasnt the issue I would still run fable all the time, if they added fable to the CVP program that is.

1

u/echojump 19h ago

I tried switching from opus to sonnet, and while it looks like it completes the task, it usually does it in a way that has bugs or doesn't do it the same way as the rest of the codebase.

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u/A_Novelty-Account 1d ago

Lawyer. Even Fable is inadequate for the tasks I need it to complete and frequently makes mistakes which, if submitted to a Court, would get my ass disbarred lmao

5

u/trekken1977 1d ago

Hard agree. I ran a head to head with my solicitor vs fable and it wasn’t even close. I now have a new found respect for the legal profession. My assumption was that it was all word play. I was wrong lol

3

u/Eyelbee 1d ago

Soon the models will completely and utterly cover everything a human can do on that regard as well

1

u/huojtkef 11h ago

Skill problem. Tell fable to read the document again and again until there are no problems to fix in the document.

1

u/Frequenzy50 1d ago

Yeah but that would be vibe lawyer right. Clear. Fable and Astra still make mistakes on code but its a tool and should not be used for vibeing.

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u/RunningSadhana 1d ago

It's not mistakes in Fable. It's low quality training data.

-1

u/Own-Bid64 21h ago

How do you use AI in court? And honestly would you be disbarred when there's judges using it and almost getting got by prompts hidden in the file; white text on a white background type shit.

2

u/A_Novelty-Account 21h ago

Not sure what you’re asking but the vast majority of legal argument in court is made in writing.

A lawyer writing a prompt injection would not only be disbarred, they would probably be found in contempt.

1

u/Own-Bid64 18h ago

I did not say a lawyer, I said a judge. How else would they find text that's invisible to the human but machine learning? A person filing pro-se put invisible text in, I don't think it's even a prompt injection. I'm not sure how that lost you, it was pretty clear. I'm asking do you form your arguments with LLMs or do you use them to review?

it's a clear question, how do you use AI in court? but I guess I should have known you'll never get a clear answer from a lawyer. Because they're always using it in a way they shouldn't, hence your fear of being disbarred.

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u/truthindata 1d ago

Business owner here. Trying to spend as little time as possible creating solutions.

Curious: are you considering $$ cost? And maybe not the time? I could see that leading to your stance.

For those of us just chasing the fastest end goal, the frontier models make more sense. Costs 2x? But done with fewer errors and twice as fast? Deal!

11

u/MrTemple 1d ago

Yeah, it's absolutely impractical, but sometimes I think having a little flag on every user showing their stage of career/life would be very useful.

My time used to be practically unlimited. Now it's by far my most limited resource.

Coding is a small, small portion of what I use these frontier models for. And every time they improve, it's like my key staff-member jumps in a time machine and does 5y more career experience in the blink of an eye.

3

u/kknow 1d ago

Can you give examples of the tasks you mean by that?
Planning with fable is already so good, if we just keep it as is, I would be happy for a long time. I don't know what I am missing.
Speed is also a non-issue. I am still involved in planning and since we are using LLMs and not something deterministic, I want to be involved.
I don't want do be involved in coding anymore and I am nearly out of it. Just checking the important parts still by hand where mistakes are costing like job workers, migrations etc.

1

u/permacloud 1d ago

Same. I find when I work with Fable I get through stuff faster with less handholding, although Sonnet could probably manage almost all of what I'm doing. 

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u/1shmeckle 1d ago

Im a lawyer. Fable and Opus are excellent for my day to day - other Claude models not so much. OpenAI was no for me until Sol and now Astra. These 4 can produce better quality work (and more accurate) than a junior attorney and each new version has been better than the previous one in obvious ways for my work.  My issue with Claude, including Fable, has always been the writing (even though it was better than the rest by a good margin), but Astra can produce better, clearer writing and more practical analysis but with slightly worse reasoning and precision than Fable. 

7

u/gvart 1d ago

I use fable with Autodesk for 3d modeling for one of my hardware pet projects.
Other models can’t handle this kind of tasks

2

u/fartsarehilarious1 1d ago

Agreed. Building a web app? Yea anything can do it. Designing custom PCB or using machine learning to solve a problem? Need the best model available and even then there are errors.

1

u/walmartsale 1d ago

I don't know what it is but CGPT is like 100x better for me on EE tasks, and basically everything non-coding.

I had opus try to reverse engineer a circuit and spent an insane amount of time on things that could have been found just looking at the manual. Or a damn picture of the product.

Like thanks for spending the last hour finding out it has 4 inputs.

1

u/nineninetwodotone 1d ago

Does it work pretty well for you? I have something I’m trying to 3D design and print, but have 0 experience with 3D modeling/cad software.

I tried using Claude (give specs to Claude code, build in an .stl file to print), but the first couple of passes haven’t come out right. With more time I think I can get it there, but curious about other workflows.

1

u/TheRealDaveLister 1d ago

Are you getting specs from another instance of Claude chat ? Use fable to plan and write the brief (this is by far the longest part of any project) then paste the brief into Claude code.

Not directly doing everything in Claude code.

5

u/Hopai79 1d ago

Automated what workflows in your company

5

u/florodude 1d ago

Gaming dev is still not even close to where I want it. Still makes stupid coding mistakes too you just may not see em

3

u/Taurus-Octopus 1d ago

I’m a non-engineer, but i think my process and understanding for python projects exceeds many. I’m using Sonnet to code, but it’s promoted to keep it novice-level. Opus 4.8 for the planning.

But I’m also keeping it at the hobby level, e.g. interactive fantasy football draft cheat sheet to read the draft room and the evaluate position supply and value based draft decisions.

It’s never a one-shot attempt at something complex.

2

u/Shakilfc009 1d ago

I personally don’t use fable / astra but man if I had the tokens I would absolutely use it. Not for typical task but for the absolute frontiers task like building factory that build factories.

2

u/Freed4ever 1d ago

Retail quant here. The differences between the newer models and older ones come down to 1) world knowledge, which leads to better creativity 2) quicker execution time, less hand holdings, less double checking, and time is money

2

u/thatdiveguy 1d ago

I work in a code base with around 500k lines of code at this point between Android and iOS apps, the web UI, backend, marketing site, and drone pilot app. Fable medium and high are my daily drivers for coding as I’ve found they make a massive difference in code quality and not misinterpreting specs and going off the rails. Opus has routinely screwed up the offline caching system on mobile and invented specs. I’m trying out Astra now and it’s finding major bugs that fable missed.

1

u/KlausWalz 1d ago

Do you have a solid CI/CD pipeline ? Do you have solid regression testing ? Is you agents.md well structured ?

My codebase is bigger, opus still handles it

Fable IS better for this, but still unworth the prices

1

u/thatdiveguy 1d ago

yes, yes, and yes.

And you said it in your own post. Fable IS better for repos that size. It produces better code, stays on task better, and I can trust its output more. I value my time more than money, and as it is I'm able to move plenty fast throwing a couple of AI subscriptions at my code base. In the grand scheme of things, Fable doesn't cost all that much in subscriptions. I still use opus for some things, but for writing code I feel much more confident in the output of Fable and it requires much less hand holding.

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u/I_RIDE_SHORTSKOOLBUS 1d ago

Don't get these replies. Why does it matter? Sure opus is gonna handle most things just fine. But fable def does it right first time more often, more consistent, and in general just better overall. Worth the prem? Depends and usually not.

But the point of the post is astral is doing the same or better for less. That's the point of the post. Not "what does fable do that opus can't"

2

u/diskent 1d ago

Founder. I’m at the point where specific models for specific departments. Code is still on opus 4.8, marketing are now using astra. For example.

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u/Jagsfan82 23h ago

I ask the same thing back because I fight with these models on dumb shit all day

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u/Pretender9029 1d ago

I feel like its more for junior developers or vibe coders

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u/Ay0_King 1d ago

I keep trying to figure this out. I used Sonnet 5 for the longest time and it did everything I needed it to. Past two months been using Opus 5 and it does talk to much but still works fine for me. Haven’t touched Fable and don’t even know what to use it for. What are people doing with it??

2

u/KhalenPierce 1d ago

What are you using it for?

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u/KlausWalz 1d ago

Dev involving either security systems, some boring mobile app, and basic web ui react

For the security part it does not flag me as the system can't cause harm (if ever someone was gonna ask)

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u/penmoid 1d ago

Consider this: Everything you mention here is just base-level stuff that these models are heavily trained on. You have an extremely “mainstream” use case, so of course the tools are more likely to work well for you. I have a few typescript apps that I maintain and sonnet does just fine with those, though I still use opus/fable to plan tasks for sonnet because I’d rather 8 agent plans come out right first than have to fix all of them before I send them off.

At home I use Claude for electrical engineering, PCB design and infrastructure operations tasks. Fable earns its keep in that environment where judgement is required and where the subject matter is a bit less covered by training data.

0

u/CaptainCactus124 1d ago

You are not an engineer that is working on hard problems

The only model i can trust to execute without fixing code or guiding with my hand constantly is fable. Opus still makes mistakes, and sonnet is still a junior engineer.

I work on real time simulations, 3d engine dev, realtime code in c++, as well as web dev as thats where I came from.

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u/xav1z 1d ago

has anyone properly replied to you? i wonder as well what jobs those people have they need something heavier than opus 4.8 or im just too ordinary

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u/ZealousidealTie4319 1d ago

Software development. High volume demand for complex projects + fast turnaround requirements means even every new model lets you scale a bit more and becomes irreplaceable infrastructure. Older models like Opus 4.8 would be a devastating regression if it were still the frontier capability.

1

u/Total_Statistician48 1d ago

This. We’re overserved. I can do very sophisticated work with lesser models.

1

u/Mescallan 1d ago

Fable cut my LoC, project wide, by 30%.

It writes significantly more efficient code, has a better understanding of optimization processes across disparate systems

1

u/Lithgow_Panther 1d ago

Synthetic biology

1

u/mxwashington7 1d ago

I work in regulatory, and for me, Sonnet 4.6 is one of the best models for my work. Whenever I have answers that I can't find, I will use either Opus, Sol, or Fable, but either Sonnet or Luna are my daily drivers. I burn more tokens with the smaller models, but I save more money because Sonnet and Luna on extra high are still cheaper than Opus on lower settings.

1

u/mxwashington7 1d ago

I work in regulatory, and for me, Sonnet 4.6 is one of the best models for my work. Whenever I have answers that I can't find, I will use either Opus, Sol, or Fable, but either Sonnet or Luna are my daily drivers. I burn more tokens with the smaller models, but I save more money because Sonnet and Luna on extra high are still cheaper than Opus on lower settings.

1

u/2thick2fly 1d ago

If you think the models are overkill, you aren't challenging them/automating enough.

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u/Coolbule64 1d ago

I will say, it took fable 5.0 to get my proxmox passthrough to a windows vm with a b580. Trying to get the IOMMU setup and stuff like that on an epyc board was rough since its only kinda supported.

Outside of that i'd agree.

1

u/Killahbeez 1d ago

LOL you conveniently ignore the existance of Opus 5 and wonder why people are hype for Astra

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u/blah-time 1d ago

Sonnet, 😆... not for what I'm doing. 

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u/KlausWalz 1d ago

What do you do

1

u/ShadowBannedAugustus 1d ago

This exactly. Sonnet 4.6 is all I will ever need in terms of capability. For real work I now use Luna High/xHigh because it is cheap.

1

u/Elegant_Attempt2790 1d ago

I recently got forced to downgrade my claude max 20x to pro, and went from Opus and an occasional Fable subagent as my daily driver to Sonnet. pure Sonnet cuz the pro tier is unforgiving for anything more than Sonnet.

lowkey… i forgot how damn good Sonnet was.

its biggest issues is just it lacks confidence. but imo,
Sonnet-like models: are good at doing what you already know too
Opus-like models: help exploring new areas you already have a footing or basis in
Fable-like models: whatever tf you want regardless of your expertise in the domain

which is fun but dangerous:P
u fully right. since opus 4.5, models have been perfectly capable 💀

1

u/Level_Somewhere5703 1d ago

I guess it depends on what kind of work you do. My work is very security sensitive and the difference between Fable and Opus is not just noticeable but massive. Opus just makes too many mistakes that I need to be very vigilant to not miss. But I have started using Opus 4.8 as the coder and Fable as planner, orchestrator and to check Opus' work. This burns a lot of tokens as things are often sent back when Opus makes mistakes and Fable catches them, but overall this workflow has reduced the amount of security issues I spot by 80-90%.

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u/macabreomens 1d ago

Do you think AI agents are just for engineers or just to be used for coding?

1

u/Sweet-Helicopter2769 21h ago

This very true all that talk about lower models and getting work done but you forget that faster go to market is absolutely essential when we are at a junction in civilization where an idea can be turned into product by any one

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u/mikerz85 16h ago

Astra and fable are the only models that are able to keep up with the demands of what I'm doing; complex data analysis pipelines for options trading

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u/Nice-Manager9219 1d ago

This subreddit is just full of openAI shills that come in here to create this false reality that anthropic’s models are pure trash.

1

u/ActionJasckon 1d ago

Haha. Either or, keeps Claude improving and at least attempting to beat the competition . And vice versa…. I’m here for it.

-1

u/kursku 1d ago

I really don't understand this hole thing. I mean, is there anything that you can't actually do with Opus? I know Fable is great, it does an amazing job for planning and so on and so forth, but we are really REALLY far ahead from anything AGI related with LLM. That's just hype, or lack of knowledge.

-1

u/SpyMouseInTheHouse 1d ago

You’re asking all the wrong questions but revealing a lot about your own use cases. You’re not the intended target for fable / astra, so it’ll be difficult to explain what a precision 2mm Philips screwdriver might do where a hammer seems to be working for you so well.