Birbla

Discussion summary

Fable 5 access was extended on paid plans until July 12, sparking mixed reactions. Users expressed frustration over usage resets, costs, and perceived value, while some appreciated continued access.

What the discussion says

  • Some users are frustrated with usage resets and costs.
  • Others appreciate the extended access despite limitations.
  • Critics mention the high expense and compare it to other models.
“Lots of 'missed' Fable time because I was pacing it for a reset 5 days”
— linsomniac
“Very expensive, not sure how it fits in with many companies' pricing”
— Computer0

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  • Hacker News
  • I am using Opis 4.8 xhigh, in OMP.sh coding agent (full agent built on Pi), with Matt Pocock Skills installed.

    I don’t see a particular bump in code quality from Fable 5. In fact, it feels less reliable to me than my current setup. No sure why I am not seeing what everybody else is seeing.

    Perhaps OMP/Pi (head and shoulders better than Claude Code) + Matt Pocock Skills already encode all the agentic improvements Fable has?

    by g42gregory
  • I had the same sentiment. In my limited testing, it didn't perform any better than Opus at all. It wasn't a particularly challenging taskset either, mostly just "add this simple feature" with plenty of context and very clearly defined scope. It worked functionally but there were much better and simpler approaches available. For the cost, I don't see how Fable can ever be worth it.
    by mavamaarten
  • Opus 4.8 xhigh is my daily driver for everything. I'd say Fable's edge is visible when designing for a complex problem with no obvious, idiomatic solutions. It is good at greenfield designs, and good at pointing out the pros and cons of hard design choices. I now do designs with Fable, and do implementations off those designs with Opus. Pretty happy. For a while I was using Fable for everything, but burned through a lot of real money for not much value, I think for coding its slow and not at all better than Opus.
    by aenis
  • I still haven't been able to use Fable. I'm a medical physicist -- it just balks at anything I do and gives me an AUP / safeguard error. Applies even if I docstrip out all the comments in my C code!
    by azalemeth
  • Is it because of the type of work you're trying to get Fable to do or because Fable knows you're a medical physicist? I.e. if your CLAUDE.md says "I'm a medical physicist" but you're asking it to write a command line tool to list github prs or something, does it balk at that?
    by noworriesnate
  • The most frustrating part is that everyone thought the access was ending on the seventh and used it up as much as possible only to have them say oh by the way on the 12th you can it'll go away and so you can keep using it. No one has any more fable usage tokens left? We all used it up they should've also reset people's weekly usage.
    by spyware_suburbs
  • I couldn't find a situation where Fable was significantly outperforming Opus enough to make me say wow.

    I tried to make it fix a browser game that is sort of like a Mario clone. It couldn't. It fumbled in the same places Opus was struggling too. I tried it with other code as well, but I couldn't get any significant performance improvement out of it, except perhaps in improving my account's token burn.

    If anything, in my opinion, GLM 5.2 had a better moment than Fable recently. Not because it is better, but because it was not hyped at all, and many people realised that it is possible to run a serious open-weight model yourself, as long as you can get the hardware to support it.

    I am not drawing a direct comparison here, because Fable is clearly the better LLM. But GLM 5.2 is a good, honest model, and I think open-weight models will only get better going forward.

    GPT 5.6 is claimed to be at a similar level, or even better than Fable. We will see. They don't seem to hype it as much, and I have not read anywhere that anyone found a soul or consciousness inside it. And if it benchmarks well, I would possibly use it more for this very reason.

    It reminds me of that story from Nassim Taleb's Incerto series where if you have two surgeons at practically the same level, but one looks like the typical surgeon and the other looks like a butcher, who are you going to choose? Taleb suggests that the answer should probably be the butcher, because to get to the same level while looking the part so much less, they probably had to be much better than the data shows for.

    I cannot also understand the hype online claiming that the Fable transitioning to token-based billing after the gratis period is equivalent of being in the permanent underclass. The only impressive demo that I saw was it writing NES games which kind of looked fun but I couldn't find more details and I am not sure if you can get this done with another model - probably you can but nobody is trying.

    So great model but it does not have the same effect as Opus 4.5 and Codex which made me feel that there was a stepping-stone change.

    GLM 5.2 had that moment though.

    by _pdp_
  • I agreed last week but the more I have used Fable this week the more I am getting use to Fable.

    I think the Taleb argument is really a stretch for this situation. I consider Taleb one of my greatest teachers but that kind of Talebism I have grown suspicious of in time.

    How many surgeons actually look like a butcher lol.

    Much of Taleb is like this that it sounds profound as a thought experiment but so much has just nothing to do with reality. A lot of what he is arguing against he is actually doing a form of.

    I love Taleb but he is absolutely full of shit. It is marketing and his brand. The proof he is correct are some vague options trades he made 40 years ago.

    by randsorex
  • > many people realised that it is possible to run a serious open-weight model yourself, as long as you can get the hardware to support it

    That's not realistic. You'd need non-consumer hardware for a frontier open-weights model. And even if you had such hardware for free. Electricity to run it would cost you more than a sub.

    by scotty79
  • If they pair this with a reset, then it will be good news. Otherwise we all just rushed to use our quota before the July 7th deadline for nothing.

    Corollary: use your quota now because a reset seems likely.

    by mil22
  • it's incredible how volatile the product and pricing situation is right now. i struggle to find an equivalent industry that has been so all over the place and obtuse
    by yulker
  • I used up all my Fable credits over the weekend. Looks like mine just reset today.
    by alfg
  • I kind of think they force reset last week. Which actually instead of giving me two weekly cycles of use only gave me a single week of use.

    Every single thing about this is fuck users fuck your usage. All those subscriptions I bought to enjoy Fable for the time allotted? Basically gone, didn't get to use the ~4 weeks if cycles or so I had planned for, bought, anticipating. I got two. And now if I want one week more, I need to pay for a full month.

    Anthropic is just the most miserable evil grinch. Everything here has totally defied everything that's been laid out for what we were told we'd get and gotten worse and worse, with less and less. Anthropic cannot general an iota of goodwill.

    by jauntywundrkind
  • Yes, especially in light of possible GPT-5.6, any day now. No reset = easy switch to 5.6. nobody wants to drop that usage.
    by GaunterODimm
  • Previously, access was set to expire today (July 7th)

    It is theorized that OpenAI may time the release of GPT 5.6 in Codex to convert people who have lost access to Fable, so this is an interesting game theoric consequence.

    by minimaxir
  • It was foreseen.
    by handfuloflight
  • It's also possible that giving access to Fable when lots of people have been taking time away from working on things (4th July, World Cup, etc) meant they didn't spend much time with it.
    by onion2k
  • It is, many people are hungry for GPT-5.6, considering it is supposed to be Fable class, with lower costs. Many Claude users were ready to jump ship.
    by bathory
  • The drug dealers are giving out a bit more of a free hit to get people hooked on the more expensive models.
    by Khaine
  • It's not free. It uses a lot of your quota.
    by charcircuit
  • Ya, and it works. I now default to Fable-for-the-design, Opus-for-the-build mode, which is sort of cost effective, but I am hooked. Opus does not compare when it comes to architecture, designs and algorithms, esp. for gnarly problems without an obvious compromise-free solution.
    by aenis
  • Does this affect anybody? It seems they didn't reset your Fable usage so this only applies to people who didn't hit their 50%-of-plan limit with Fable and I can't imagine that's many people given how this thing eats through tokens like that's its job. On Pro I generally could not complete a single plan+execution cycle without hitting my token cap, so that 50% of weekly limit got eaten up fast and I assume that's the typical case.

    I suppose it benefits people whose weekly reset is sometime between now and the 12th? Feels like vibe management, because I find this part of the promo more annoying than not.

    by somenameforme
  • I was planning on using it all until today so I burned quite a lot yesterday.
    by bdelmas
  • > I can't imagine that's many people

    Well, I don't know how many people it is but I certainly haven't bothered to use it except once or twice. What's the point in getting used to it as a daily driver when it won't be available in perpetuity?

    But in any event, you're still right that it won't affect those of us in that camp.

    by phinnaeus
  • I used up all my Fable credits over the weekend and looks like it’s completely reset as of today.
    by alfg
  • I tried it but the difference to Opus didn’t seem to justify the extra cost and stress around these limits.

    The Max plan at 180€/month excl VAT already comes up for budget review every time. Not sure any sort of increase will be tolerated at all.

    by isodev
  • Personally, I forgot the initial deadline was so soon and hadn't found anything to use it for yet.
    by Retr0id
  • I maximised usage and have reached the limit. I feel like I did 2 week's worth of hobby work over the last few days.

    I got Fable to write multiple plans, spent a great part of the weekend reviewing them. Then with superpowers I left must of those plans executing with little intervention over the past few days.

    I struggled to get Opus to just keep going without trying to convince me that it's late.

    by nevi-me
  • Loosing Fable July 12th and getting usage cut by a third post July 13th is going to be rough. Looks like all the reporting about Anthropic trying their earnest to turn a profit this quarter is true. In the mean time, I will gladly switch to Codex. Their Pro plan gives you amble usage and only runs close when you are using the fast mode. And even if you run out of credits, they have given users so many credit resets this past month that you can just activate one of those after. I understand Fable is a great model, but switching to API usage will run many people thousands of dollars with the same usage from their subscription plans. Not worth it IMO.

    EDIT: corrected usage cut amount

    by nickandbro
  • > In the mean time, I will gladly switch to Codex.

    IME Codex had a bit of a big head/ego about writing what it thinks I ought to want rather than what I actually ask for, and I've had to spend some time cleaning up its slop.

    by eli_gottlieb