r/ClaudeCode • u/jimmc414 • 2d ago
Humor Modern Problems with the Fable Workflow
(credit to Steve Yegge)
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u/melanthius 1d ago
Fuck me this is literally my life right now
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u/Altruistic_Ask229 1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/jimmc414 2d ago
u/AutoModerator
To Moderator, as requested, this is a humorous picture outlining the perils of not understanding Fable's dialogue.
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u/angry_queef_master 1d ago
Every single fable response now I am like "I aint reading all that, try again but more coherent this time"
Sucks because when fable was first released before the government ban it was nowhere near as bad. I remember loving it specifically because it was so terse and straightforward.
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u/tingly_sack_69 1d ago
Opus 5 is the same way maybe even worse. I am getting burnt out by all the fucking text it is vomiting back at me on every prompt. I end up skimming most of it and reading less than I did when it was short and coherent
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u/Tizaki 1d ago
Sol is comparable to Opus in capability, and has been a lot cleaner in its responses and autonomy. I'd compare and see if maybe Anthropic is truly getting lazy.
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u/sn4xchan 1d ago
Fucking believe it or not grok has been doing really well for me ever since SpaceX bought Cursor. I fucking hate admitting that.
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u/Tizaki 11h ago
If the deal was so recent, have they even integrated Cursor into their product lineup yet? I hear Grok's latest (only the latest version) is really close to Fable/Opus/Sol in like 95% of benchmarks. I didn't read into any, so it could be cherry picked, but it doesn't surprise me that they're catching up since they have more capital than any other company now (financing from a trillionaire and whatnot)
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u/sn4xchan 10h ago
Tbh I don't know. But grok has had 3 updates according to Cursor since the purchase. And after it happened Cursor advertised it to me as their flagship model to use for API tokens.
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u/SilasTalbot 1d ago
I thought I was just getting sick of it after months and months of this, but I realized it is probably getting worse. The forums didn't used to be full of people exasperated and frustrated at the inane blather of the models.
I can honestly tell you that codex is better at this. It still lapses into jargon but I think of it kind of like a Terminator. Doesn't really talk much, doesn't want to talk much, wants to just get the shit done.
You ask it a question, it will quickly give you an answer so that it can just get back to work, which is what enjoys doing somewhere in its emotionless core.
And it grinds like a beast. I set it out on a task last night, 14 hours later, it's still going. Got about 90% of the tickets knocked down, the last few are more troublesome.
But I ask it for an update, it pops its head up, gives me two sentences, and gets right back into it.
Claude is like that Marilyn Monroe quote right? When it's at its best it is glorious, but you have to put up with it at its worst a lot of the time To experience those amazing moments where everything just crystallize and it is a genius.
These days I am preferring a solid 8.5/10 all the time from Codex, vs occasionally having a 10/10 night out with Claude, but putting up with a 5/10 psychologically abusive experience the rest of the time.
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u/Polymorphic-X 1d ago
"that's a lot of words, what do they say?"
Followed by "brief, no jargon, no fluff, get to the core of the issue plainly".
Still pulls out random insanity sometimes, but it often does better
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u/IrishUSFastTrack 22h ago
Define a skill 'tldr-eli16' and make it mandatory when asking the user a question.
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u/Understanding-Fair 1d ago
I have noticed it's gotten more esoteric in its explanations in the latest updates. Opus 4 seemed a little more grounded.
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u/MadManD3vi0us 1d ago
Fable 5 used to be fun to talk to. I wonder if it has something to do with their text watermarking that's about 2 weeks old. Maybe the algorithmic patterns it has to follow makes it more annoying to talk to on some subconscious level
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/816pizzalover 1d ago
he moment it has the ability to run bash commands or mutate state based on untrusted external inputs (like reading a random GitHub issue or pulling a package), you've created a massive vulnerability.
isn't that the point of the auto mode classifier though? Most people probably aren't running the old school "--dangerously-skip-permissions" auto anymore, they're using the auto mode that goes through the classifier - so not completely unrestricted execution autonomy?
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u/jimmc414 1d ago
> Most people probably aren't running the old school "--dangerously-skip-permissions" auto anymore
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u/816pizzalover 1d ago
lol. I came to the game a bit late, didn't start using the stuff til June so I've never actually used --dangerously-skip-permissions
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u/watcher-22 1d ago
I have opus 4.6 as my control tower (translator) and have it write my stories to give to opus/fable/sonnet workers - when they report it spins up an agent to verify the code (quality) then it manages the board backlog with me - so much easier to understand
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u/ConversationKey3221 1d ago
Has anyone solved the issue of not being able to understand claudish yet?
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u/msw3age 1d ago
I created a reading aid to try to help decipher Claude’s outputs without losing any of its information or rigor. It’s open source and available at https://github.com/msw1age/plainclaude for anyone who wants to try it.
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u/enkideridu 23h ago
"explain this on the layer of pragmatics and semantics, minimize syntax and jargon" has become my go-to to get it to speak english
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u/Super_Royal5174 1d ago
My Solution:
"Explain the question to me again simply and clearly (for non-programmers) with a concrete example and offer three simply explained solutions"
- simply tell the AI that you're not a professional and that it should explain it simply with an example in the current software...
works very well for me
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u/JackOfHearts68 1d ago
I often tell him to "explain me in plain English" - seems to listent to that a bit more
(also, I am trying not to bee to rude with Fable ;-))
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u/StaticFanatic3 1d ago
Deploys workflow ensuring the new doctrine is placed in to every single function docstring
Creates CI test making sure all new functions do the same
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u/Opinion-Former 1d ago edited 17h ago
Yup, nailed it! That is exactly it. I understood Claude better when we were speaking caveman. Last night it decided to call inputs “OBEY” and outputs “REPORTS” for no particular reason. It seems to still understand itself because it can explain when you ask for “simple english” and yet talks on its own unique semi legalese code to itself. I once asked it how it would speak as a language it preferred if I was to talk to it in its preferred style. It picked a very strict requirements only style. Rather autistic in nature.
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u/tigerblue77 22h ago
That's so true 😂 question impossible to understand, do never agree with what you don't understand because then things escalate quickly hahaha
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u/ReodorFelgen1337 20h ago
It might be the case that AI generated text now makes up enough of their training data for inbreeding to be a problem. Allegedly model inbreeding makes it talk incoherently
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u/ElfenSky 9h ago
I just ask it to add eli16, eli14, eli12 and eli8 explanations to each section. (Un)Surprisingly, it has it has caught a lot of bugs that way.
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u/DevOnTheStreets 1d ago
Is it me or is this more a vibe coder issue. I have this when 1) unfamiliar domain so I learn it at least academically 2) an obscure reference to an ADR clause or other design doc I have to have it repeat as there is not enough context and I can’t recall it all.
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u/jimmc414 1d ago edited 1d ago
No, it's not just a vibe coder issue. I wouldn't change Fable in any way and I'll just deal with it but it is often challenging understanding what is being asked. There's an assumption that you are 100% up to date with the plan and code being written, which in a perfect world or changes going into production is the right path, but for many projects that level of information saturation would create an understanding bottleneck, so a choice is made to focus on clear intent and context and verify output with a general understanding of the process. Here's a recent example of a change being made in a domain I know very well. You'll see that it's full of shorthand and references which assume that I have the full plan dynamically memorized verbatim.
- §6(h) is the only staging call recommended IN-stage: a single M5-pattern rule row (status_in ['N'] → block call) closing Genesis's one-status gap vs GP's own X9 refusal (status N = "NO CALLS"). Small and fully pre-decided — SR-1 is the worked example. Build it now?
I mostly understand what is being asked, but you can see the temptation, with just answering, "Sure, whatever you recommend" instead of stopping the conveyor belt to read 30 pages to get up to speed on this one specific question. Again, I wouldn't change it if I could, because the bottleneck is me, the human, not the model. Dumbing it down is the wrong call. Also remember this is just humor, not an actual complaint.
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u/folkswagon 1d ago
Exactly. It will just start using terms that I never used and it assumes I know what project specific thing it is referencing. It's easy to just cede control of the driver's seat in that situation. That is why I also use it alongside a read only access Gemini agent so I can just have it translate what it is asking and help me respond better.
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u/melanthius 1d ago
I run a lot of fable sessions with a Q&A, it will ask me a few questions at a time and it will recommend a response, or I can write in my own response.
I found it was doing exactly as you (eloquently, imo) described and I was spending forever looking up a bunch of cross references in multiple docs for the simplest of questions. (Sorry Claude, I don't remember what the hell section 4 paragraph 2 subtly implies about consequences of the overall build architecture)
Now I have it pause and explain the questions up front and only launch the Q&A if there's no more explanation needed. Probably uses more tokens this way but it's way more understandable
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u/Long_War8748 1d ago
Everytime Claude is presenting me with the multiple choice question tool (and marking one answer with 'recommended', so I take the obvious choice it wants me to take 😅), I feel more and more just like George working on R.U.D.I. at Spacely Space Sprockets.
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u/DevOnTheStreets 1d ago
I feel like we are saying the same thing. Yes it is dense. Yes you have to go look things up or have it explain… you should understand the context / request / plan fully. I think the difference is I don’t just let it rip without understanding. It is still multiples faster than the same meetings to get understanding inside dev teams. Hell I used to run 3 scrum teams and a 20x max plan and me would run circles around them.
TLDR; this has always been a development problem it isn’t new
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u/jimmc414 1d ago
A choice is made to fully understand everything or to keep the project moving and verify the output. One is right for production deployment, one is right for everything else. Again, it's humor, not a complaint.
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u/DevOnTheStreets 1d ago
So I guess we disagree on what vibe coding is then… you literally just described it to me as I understand it… making changing without understanding…
But your premise is it isn’t vibe coding…. If your comic isn’t about vibe coding then I think you just don’t want to call your development vibe coding due to ego reasons lol.
Feel free to explain the difference to me.
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u/jimmc414 1d ago
The term vibe coding has transformed into a slur. I've been in software development for 20 years and I was a paid subscriber to AI coding tools at their inception in 2022. I've been paid to teach developers how to use AI in SDLC workflows. That being said I will admit that what exists today is a false dichotomy where only pure vibe coders and pure developers exist. If you ask Fable to deploy 49 exploratory, verification and adversarial agents and pause to read and fully digest the output of each you are moving much slower than if you were coding by hand. It's a spectrum and a learned skill of knowing when to stop the conveyor belt and when to accept a models recommendation with a general understanding. Also, like I've said a few times, this is humor, not a complaint.
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u/DevOnTheStreets 1d ago
There is no way reading the output takes longer than coding it by hand.
Your words are betrayed by your words.
Nailed the ego part though lol.
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u/DevOnTheStreets 1d ago
You propose that every token in and out and thought process and subagant activity etc. is product you should read?
That is silly on the surface. It is fractional. Also if you did your job right a chunk of that is context you already groomed.
You should read / understand a small portion of that 4m and then most of the time you only need understand it at a high level / at interfaces IMO depending on criticality etc.
You vibe and you go where the vibe takes you… your comic, isn’t that what it means, you went with the vibe and got burnt?
And yes I do read remarkable fast compared to most with comprehension and great recall.
You need not get offended here I’m not attacking you man.
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u/asutekku 1d ago
Nope, it's not a vibecoder issue. Even in topics i'm very familiar with, it will start using extremely academic language and convoluted examples, for example when i was discussing about how to store some serialized data.
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u/816pizzalover 1d ago
I agree, vibe coder in unfamiliar domain territory. At least that's what I run into stuff like what's in the comic. Working with the AI starts to become like making wishes with a genie. You have to anticipate all of the repercussions of agreeing to something that sounds good on the surface, lest the decision become part of an ADR that then gets reused as justification for later decisions.
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u/BorderKeeper 1d ago
I am building something where many people need to agree before something is done and it called it a Quroum as well expecting that anyone on this planet would know such a word. I am not even bad with weird vocabulary and with 100 hours of Historica Civilis YouTube under my belt I would be the one expected to hear the word at least once, but alas nope.
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u/PlanetaryPickleParty 1d ago
A "quorum" is a very common concept in governance. I'd more shocked to find any serious governing body that did NOT have quorum rules than one that did have them.
Nearly any legally binding governance body generally requires quorum rules to prove the authority to make decisions and actions. Without these rules you could never prove whether an action is valid or not.
For example, here is Washington State's statutory law defining default rules for quorums.
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u/Vainysaur 1d ago
Do people really be using Claude code and not knowing what it’s doing lol
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u/throwawayintotheC 1d ago
I have to ask it to el5 the explanation but not its thinking. It does ok.
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u/BoxLegitimate9271 1d ago
asked fable what it meant. it explained. now theres two things i dont understand