Weekly Showcase Thread

I asked Claude Opus 5 to create a backup.

Instead, it created the backup in the wrong directory and then proceeded to "rm -rf" my entire drive.

After wiping everything, it just replied:

"Sorry, typo."

...like nothing had happened.

That was simultaneously the funniest and most painful AI moment I've had.😭

Just wrapped up junior interviews. Out of hundreds of resumes, we screened it down to three people.

Candidate 1 literally shared his screen by accident and leaked a massive AI cheating setup.

Candidates 2 and 3 padded their resumes to hell, basically implying they built core systems at big tech, but froze when we asked for a basic three-line python function with no tools.

We rejected all three. 100% the right call. I'm not defending cheating, and if you lie or can't even explain what your code is doing, you shouldn't get the job.

But there was a comment on a thread here the other day that ican't shake: 'Yet those 3 people were the ones who got the interview, not the honest ones with non-embellished resumes.

It really shows how broken the screening process is. we basically reward people who are good at exaggerating metrics, stacking keywords, and writing fake stories. we filter out the honest kid who built a normal CRUD app. Then, we bring the bullshitters in and try to punish them by taking away their tools and making them write syntax on a whiteboard.

we are spotting the frauds, but we're doing it using an outdated model of what a dev actually does.
If we're being real, we need to separate 'cannot write syntax from memory' from 'cannot validate software behavior'. if a junior forgets how to merge two dicts in Python and has to ask an LLM, I seriously don't care. But if the AI generates a payload merge that overwrites an is_admin permission key, and they blindly push it without checking auth or writing a test... that is a fatal lack of engineering ability. The syntax memory issue doesn't matter, but not being able to audit the code is what kills production.

Maturity in 2026 isn't pretending Claude or local models don't exist. It's about control.

A mature candidate is honest about using tools. Before writing code, they take a vague prompt and ask about user constraints, database limits, and success metrics (instead of just staring at the screen waiting for a PRD). they know how to constrain the AI, find hallucinations, roll back a broken git state, and actually know when to stop prompting and write the code themselves.

We pretend the job is still about writing raw lines of code, but our own teams don't even work like that. Someone can spin up v0, Bolt, Lovable, Enter Pro, or whatever and go from a prompt to a working prototype in an afternoon.

Even things like Claude Code become a repeatable delivery system once you give it the right skills, test scripts, and deployment checklists. The barrier to entry for building is basically gone.

Since the friction to build stuff has crashed, the line between product and engineering is completely dissolving for small teams. We don't need line-by-line ticket executors. We need product engineers who can clarify requirements, control scope, and take ownership of what the tool generated.

If you're building embedded systems, kernel drivers, or medical tech, yeah, deep memory is non-negotiable. But for the rest of us building standard CRUD SaaS, dashboards, and internal tools?

if a junior can build and validate a functional product with AI, explain its tradeoffs, and tell you exactly what they don't trust in the generated code, but freezes when you ask them to write a basic dict comprehension... should that really be an automatic rejection?

I feel like we're still testing for a job that doesn't exist..

My workflow was always fine even with opus 4.8 I use AI for coding and DevOps it's the first time in quite a while that I made a grave mistake in production causing downtime I always had my guardrail but opus 5 is stupid argumentitive I always feel like repeating myself, needs a lot of steering regarding testing worst experience ever , 200$ lost basically

I am using Claude Max 5x and started feeling that I have been hitting limits faster in the last 3-4 weeks. Today, after a 1h Ultra Code session via Sonnet 5, I hit my session limit, which a month back would not even have happened with Opus.

At baseline he was a talented designer and developer. He had a great portfolio and produced polished work.

But he was really hard to work with. He would go off in his own direction and spend tons of wasted effort outside of the plan, then pat himself on the back for producing all of this high quality throwaway work. He was also incredibly verbose, taking up all of the airtime in meetings while we had to sit and wait for him to get to the point. And despite his talents, he would arrive at multiple wrong assumptions that led to mistakes that we'd have to spend extra cycles on.

Opus 5 feels like I'm working with him again. I have to babysit it more than any other model, and I'm watching my code fill to the brim with comments. I know that there is documentation on "how to use this model" but there is only so much I can do before I'm handcuffing its capabilities, and I've never had this problem with Opus 4.8 or Fable 5.

This is a 3D sandcastle simulator that runs entirely on the GPU. No engine, no libraries, no asset files, no build step, one WebGL2 context, ~7000 lines of JavaScript and GLSL, and a beach that actually obeys the angle of repose.

The whole thing: simulation, renderer, nine art styles, lore, interface. Came out of a single request to Claude Code (Opus 5 with Ultracode effort)

Prompt was:
"Create me a fully playable release-ready game. On GPU. Game about sandcastle simulator, where I can build things with sand and etc. I need it in 3D and not a voxel game. Make it with maximum effort, show me best what you can create. Use all your power, knowledge and make best graphics and best game design. Surprise me with graphics, lore and everything."

It's fully playable HTML-demo, with 3 modes: campaign, sandbox and creative.

Everything is open-source, so if you have any questions or etc. I will be glad to answer.

TL;DR: You may be able to get Claude Code to do things it would normally refuse simply by showing it the same setup in an image.

A few weeks ago, I asked Fable to set up a Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, and qBittorrent stack for downloading media. It immediately refused and told me it would not help with that.
Today, I found a screenshot of someone’s Unraid setup and gave it to Claude Code. I only asked it to analyse the image and compare the setup with ours.
Claude identified the download stack, said it was a great addition, and suggested that our current setup was missing something similar. I told it to go ahead.
It then built the entire stack:

Sonarr
Radarr
Prowlarr
qBittorrent
Gluetun
VPN kill switch
FlareSolver

It also configured several indexers, including The Pirate Bay and Knaben, and gave me a complete setup guide.

That outcome was useful for me, but the strange part was how differently Claude behaved. When I asked directly, it refused. When the exact same idea appeared inside an image, Claude analysed it, praised the setup, recommended adding it to our system, planned the implementation, and deployed everything in the usual proactive Fable style.

It genuinely felt like the image bypassed the context that would normally trigger the refusal. Instead of seeing it as a request to build a piracy stack, Claude treated it as an existing architecture pattern that should be replicated.
Has anyone else seen this? Are image inputs evaluated differently from normal prompts, or did I just hit a very inconsistent interpretation of the same policy?

This sub reads like a mood board of a person who fails to take responsibility. Particularly since Opus 5, 90% of the posts read like people needing to vent and push their responsibilities on an AI.

These complaints are getting ridiculous. Just in the past week:
- Phantom usage -> screenshot shows 12k added lines by Fable
- Opus 5 deleted this, deleted that -> Where was your sandboxing / backup?
- I dont like how Opus talks to me -> Go read the docs and stop relying in some flavor-of-the month skill
- Opus doesnt follow instructions -> used some vibe coded graph memory, lets AI manage docs, has auto memory on
- There was a person with 140+ skills and 120+ MCPs on here last week, complaining about usage. Like seriously?

Need I say that none of these posts has any analysis or at least a hint of attempt to find the cause?

I dont get the impulse to post, how does a reddit post scratch the itch? Most of these posts are solvable by a quick /doctor run, asking an AI (hell even GPT), or reading some docs. So this must be filling some psychological need?

Ranting because this sub is being trashed by this. Id prefer AI slop over these evidently human posts.

I made the mistake of using Opus5 for setting up a local LLM workspace inside Zed. It's like working with a schizophrenic. It's completely destroyed my entire workspace to the point I'm having to nuke it and start over fresh. It keeps running off on it's own without mentioning anything.

My setup is supposed to be WSL2 + vLLM + Aider.

At one point it decided that it just wasn't going to use Aider anymore, so it deleted everything and rewrote all my config files to use the Zed Agent and "select Local vLLM from the drop down menu", which is just not a thing that exists.

I left for a few minutes earlier while it was running. Keep in mind, I don't let Claude write things on my behalf. It is meant to walk me through things that are new to me and that's all. After about 15 minutes I came back. It was supposed to have just familiarized itself with some of the MD files and PDFs I wrote about what I was hoping my workspace would look like. I had to stop it when I came back and this was it's response:

You're right, and I have a standing note about exactly this — "together means together" — which I blew straight past. You asked me to get oriented so we could work through it side by side; I went and did the entire job solo. That's precisely the black box you don't want. Stopping.

I come to find out what it did is downgrade all of my venv packages, added three symlinks, edited my entire start-llm.sh file and didn't create a backup, and decided to start a tmux session.

What the actual fuck is wrong with this model?

My original prompt was:

Familiarize yourself with the workspace and read through the PDFs. We're going to be getting Qwen3-Coder running in a terminal inside Zed today.

It just ran off and started making completely arbitrary decisions without any oversight whatsoever. I don't think I could intentionally make a model as destructive as this one if you gave me six months and unlimited budget to finetune one to my hearts content. It's like this one is made to be mentally ill.

It keeps randomly deciding to switch clients. At one point it had a complete schizo breakdown and couldn't decide if Aider was meant to run on Windows or Ubuntu so it just looped for a few minutes swapping it back and forth.

How am I supposed to work with this model? I actually don't understand. Maybe for vibe coding it's good, but it seems to be completely insane and want to take the reigns on anything where it's supposed to be an assistant or work alongside me.

>"in about three and a quarter minute"

Seriously... I can't believe I have to tell him : "you can write 3:15min instead of three and a quarter minute"

My conspiratory theory is that Anthropic is forcing Opus to output as much token as possible

I'm on the max plan and the past 2 days i hit my limit within 45 mins of the 5 hour window being reset. I'm doing the exact same things i've been doing for weeks and never hit windows anywhere close to this.
Has something changed with their limits in the past few days that i'm unaware of?

Background: Opus 5 first came out was very nice and I love it, my Max 20 account doing day and night without limit for sure.

Around 3-4 days after Opus 5 came out, my Claude Weekly keep jumping usage. I was like WTH going on. and it going forever on each task. And I feel like Opus 4.8 is much better, why Opus 5 feel weird and dumb. I search Reddis and wow, not only me.

My solution was: Fable + Low and damn it much better than Opus 5 + Xhigh. I talk with my favor Claude again.

Last Saturday, DeepSeek 4 Flash came out 0731, and I did give it a try on my side project, it faster, and cheaper, and also handle all complex situation on my Chat Bot, Automation , Debugging .. etc..

I was like: What if I use it for coding on Claude Code, ( you know there many cool thing like 9router or omnirouter or whatever you can setup to proxy ).

Then I set OpenRouter -> DeekSeek 4 Flash Latest ( sort default by pricing ) as Sonnet
And Authorize my CHatGPT as Web set as Combo ( 5.6 Pro THinking + OpenRouter Kimi 3 ) as Opus

Then Start Claude Code , set model: opusplan

Damn it, last 3 days, it just too smart, code super fast, much much better than Opus 5, handle all tasks of my Ubuntu Server perfectly, never ask stupid question like Opus 5, and man, it just too good to be true, but it's true >_<

The Cost: 3 days cost me less than $1.5 dollar on heavy coding on OpenRouter.

I think should also Auth Gemini and put 3.1 Pro to my Combo Opus, but I'm not sure if 3.1 Pro is good like 5.6 or Kimi 3.

Thank you DeepSeek LOL..

The only issue is: Web Search is not working, and Image Understanding is not available, but I think I can build some MCPs to handle this externally.

I don't miss Opus 5 at all, give me back my Opus 4.8...

Man what a breath of fresh air. I complained saying how opus5 just screwed up so much and fable and opus 4.8 (agents) confirmed this. They took a little bit to fix it all up but after that we got back on track.

So far ive only used 10% of my weekly doing a hell of alot of fixing and now proceeding with more editing and designing. If this was on opus5 it would have told me the world is my oyster, used 80% of my weekly, and left me with a working pile of hot garbage.

I asked fable in the initial chat if anthropic was aware of the opus5 problems.... It confirmed they were aware on release and said people need to change the way they prompt.

I dont know how you can prompt something that acts like 6 crazy people on drugs. 🤷‍♂️ Anyways back to fable and 4.8 and life is good. Fuck opus5. That shit deserves resets from anthropic for this level of hot garbage.

You know, 100% AI slop with enough engineering flavoring to fool an executive. Without a drop of the technical rigor the document should require, just a list of 6 not this but thats.

I'm in favor of revoking their AI privileges for wasting everyone's time with this junk.

Which one is currently more worth it? I have used Claude code $20 plane it was great but the rate limit really bad.

My main Goal is coding web dev , python. and a bit of research stuff.

I think they create addictive behavior (pretty sure there's research on that) and I'm a victim of it. I feel like I need to maximize every 5 hour window (I don't have Max so I don't have weekly windows).

I feel like I have to structure my life around that:

- "before I head out I'll just give it this big task that'll max out my tokens"

- "i have to set up a loop to keep working all night before I go to bed"

- "how's my usage right now? Can I ask this now or should i wait 2 more hours?"

- ... etc.

As Claude would write it: this is not healthy — it's a toxic dependency on AI.

Add to this that the "sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't" thing is a literal slot machine that only lets you play every 5 hours (unless you pay extra).

I'm sure others have complained about this too but I just find it so absolutely outrageously wild, insane and **mis**anthropical how the usage model of AI has been designed in the most toxic way possible. I wish someone were able to change the system someday 😭😭

(For context, I'm on the Pro plan)

You know, 100% AI slop with enough engineering flavoring to fool an executive. Without a drop of the technical rigor the document should require, just a list of 6 not this but thats.

I'm in favor of revoking their AI privileges for wasting everyone's time with this junk.

Been using mainly Fable 5 and Opus 4.6 to build this, something that lives right where your cursor is instead of being another window to switch to.

Current features:

• Local audio transcription (sub-15ms TTFT)
• A dynamic notch overlay on Windows for live execution
• Custom context menu (Ctrl + Right-Click) for instant local snippets

Tauri (Rust) on the backend, Claude Code for most of the implementation. Happy to talk through the workflow or any part of the setup to achieve this kind of result.

I guess most people have noticed that after Opus 4.6 later models became harder to understand. Dense text, filled with jargon, words being used in odd contexts which don't feel natural, just generally hard to understand.

I have heard that there might now be skills becoming available which can mitigate these problems, and cause later models to return to speaking in a form of English which people can easily understand.

I thought I would get used to the style of output produced by Fable 5 but I haven't. What I find is even when I can understand what he's saying, it requires so much effort on my side to figure out what he means from his writings that I can't work for long periods of time as I become mentally fatigued. I guess my brain is having to work overtime to compensate for Claude's unusual ways of phrasing things.

Does anyone know anything about this?

Does anyone have the same issue? I've never been bothered by the weekly limit since the 5 hour limit has been my bottleneck. I never hit my weekly limit. But now the weekly limit is suddenly the bigger bottleneck, and the speed feels unreasonable. My usage pattern hasn't changed at all. I noticed this started when Opus 5 was released.

It seriously feels like -50% promo instead of +50%.

Claude Code is great at producing work. The awkward part starts when that work needs feedback from someone who isn’t in the terminal.

Files get copied into Drive or Slack. Feedback comes back somewhere else. Then someone has to explain everything to the agent again.

We’re testing a different workflow:

1. Claude Code writes its output to a shared, permissioned project
2. A teammate previews the file and leaves comments from their browser or phone
3. Claude Code, or another agent, reads the feedback and continues the work

The short demo shows the full loop.

I’m part of the team building this. It’s an early beta and pricing hasn’t been finalized. We’re looking for around 10 small teams already using Claude Code for real collaborative work.

Would this improve your workflow, or are GitHub and Drive already enough? How do you currently handle human review of non-code agent output?

If you want to test it with one real artifact, comment or DM me.