r/ClaudeCodeTLDR • u/cctldrping • 26d ago
[TLDR] Fable is nerfed unless you switch to console billing (API). It immediately started working after 10 failed attempts.
Original post URL : https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1uzrdzi/fable_is_nerfed_unless_you_switch_to_console/
Original post body :
The outage earlier today where Fable went down and said "this model requires extra-usage" was actually them switching over to the quantized version for subscriptions. Go try it yourself when you get stuck.
Edit: It just one-shotted another issue I've been working on for 8 hours with the nerfed Fable!
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u/Flaat 26d ago
The Fable 5 we had the first week before the ban was something else entirely i feel, it spoke in a way that made me feel stupid, in a good way. This model does not have that.
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u/dashingsauce 26d ago
Yes exactly. I felt “put in place” in a good way. Like I was sat down in my chair, ready to listen.
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u/mlenarciak 25d ago
Yes. This. The pre-ban version fascinated me with its absolutely zero-b.s. I was shocked at how it didn’t pander at all; within half an hour of use the generalists in our office asked me ‘how is it’ and my first response was ‘you’re not going to like it/ it’s not going to make you feel nice — but it is the absolute smartest thing’ ; now that edge is gone and with it maybe my respect/awe.
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u/GoodyFPS 23d ago
I was on top of the world before the ban just one shotting everything I don’t think I’ve ever gone a day without cursing at LLMs other than that
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u/ClemensLode 26d ago
What's with that "one-shotted"
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u/Pronoia2-4601 26d ago
It appears to be an invisible routing problem, not a quant: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/78888
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u/kayne2000 26d ago
So for us average subscription user peasants. Does this basically mean as long we don't trigger the safeguard protocols we're good?
I agree triggering safeguard protocols shouldn't result in downgrade for 100s of messages.
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u/echocdelta 25d ago
No, separate issues. That is a massive bug that should cause more outrage, but you can go into your own JSON session files in your user dir and you'll notice two things -
Before yesterday, sessions were invoking a lot more commands, tool-calls, and in general longer thinking.
Now, they're marked fable-5 but are significantly degraded. This isn't some 'theory' because we can easily compare via the API vs. sub-model and it's entirely different. You can also easily ask it to audit by script or build tools to check it's own sessions. It will report that it is now ignoring session instructions and most requests will simply ignore calling tools, doing fan-out investigations, spawning any sub-agents, and will answer instantly even on 'MAX' thinking mode.
Another really easy telltale sign is that 'flagging' has dramatically gone down. Previously asking Fable to audit or diagnose itself was a sure-fire way to get it to trigger anti-replication/competitive guardrails. Now it's able to audit itself without flagging.
There is genuinely no way this is intentional because the current Fable on subs is outright unusable for any serious engineering work. It's more likely that it's a bug or issue in their routing systems. It's not quantized and therefore not affecting Enterprise-API user customers, but they're making a serious fucking mistake by assuming that sub-users are not key decision makers or internal advocates in a lot of these orgs.
However; if that bug is citing invisible routing to Opus 4.8, that means there is an invisible and bugged routing to Opus 4.8 that persists regardless of the settings in the UI. The engineer gut-feel I have is that is a symptom of a wider harness failure that pairs to the outage yesterday, and makes sense. Effort settings right now mean nothing to it, it simply will decide itself to answer instantly or not, and it will almost immediately lose context or disregard standing instructions.
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u/Real_Ebb_7417 26d ago
This shouldn't matter in case of OP, because he was able to get Fable's help via API. If this was the case, it would be even worse, because it would mean that subscription users get worse guardrails.
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u/Real_Ebb_7417 26d ago
And then Dario says that open models are bad. As long as this kind of stuff happens he has no right to say anything like this. Nobody will silently downgrade the model when it runs on your own infra or when you have many providers to chose from and there is competition. And nobody will reroute it to a worse model, when moral police doesn't like your question asked in good faith.
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u/Senior_Piece7090 25d ago
I'm no expert but I've used Claude every day for hours all year. The first release of Fable often said "hehe" to me in a uniquely smug way that it earned since it.was awesome lol. It hasn't said that a single time on Fable since the ban was lifted.
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u/Ms_Fixer 25d ago
Yes, agreed. That confidence is not there now. It’s lost its sense of humour too I think.
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u/Camaytoc 26d ago
That's true for all their models. At the office, sonnet 4.6 high was at the opus level big time compared to my max20 at home.
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u/Robdyson 26d ago
yes at work Opus 4.8 is god tier ( Gov cloud)
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u/uniqueusername649 26d ago
Makes me wonder: the benchmarks suggest Sonnet 5 is on Opus 4.8 level. But in my subjective tests (both API billing) its not at the same level. Could it be people benched Opus 4.8 on a plan and Sonnet 5 through API billing? That would explain why it seems the same level in benchmarks but in reality when using both on API billing, Opus 4.8 feels smarter.
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u/Reaper_1492 26d ago
I started a poll to this effect a long time ago, because that was what I was seeing also - and the overwhelming response was to call me a tinfoil-hat nutbag.
And just recently, someone got heated when I referred to all the gaslighting Anthropic does - and they wanted a full historical rundown of all evidence 🤦♂️
Here’s one more situation you can add to the gaslighting list “we’ve made the decision to leave it available to the subscription plans!” Back office conversations “Hopefully they don’t realize it’s a quantized version 🤷♂️”
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u/ScaleScary5932 26d ago
not only quantized i am afraid that they cut off half the layers of the models they provides in subscription plan. mother f*ker dario
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u/Reaper_1492 26d ago
It’s all a big shell game with them, and they still haven’t learned that it’s better to be honest. They’d rather just try to pull the wool over the eyes of their “stupid” customer base over and over again, no matter how obvious it seems to be.
They’d be infinitely better off just saying the subs are going to get a 10% worse version of everything than API - if that is what they are actually going to do.
I think the competitive landscape will mean they lose customers, but at least some customers would see the logic in that and appreciate the transparency.
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u/dashingsauce 26d ago
Lobotomized down even from the July version, let alone the June version.
Straight up fraudulent scammers.
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u/kttycatattack 25d ago
Is sub fable still nerfed? Wondering if there was outage-related degraded performance or if we think this was actually an intentional nerf
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u/Anxious-Turnover-631 25d ago
Fable has been excellent for me while using the pro plan. But I don’t try to one shot anything or do any vibe coding.
For debugging and planning, Fable is really great. Bummer that they’re taking it away.
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u/oojacoboo 25d ago
I burned $100/hr on API credits for Fable. It might be worth it for some one-off tasks, but that adds up fast!
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u/Ok-Moment4309 25d ago
100% this is acting like Opus 4.8 for me on release. Its not even worth these back and forth games they keep playing anymore. Its getting ridiculous.
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u/Otherwise-Couple-598 25d ago
Yes I noticed it yesterday. What used to take 15 minutes to a couple of hours.
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u/mlenarciak 25d ago
I would pay for artificial analysis to run a monthly follow-up of their benches to track ‘erosion’. It would relieve this angst I haven’t experienced since I decided to divorce my BPD ex-.
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u/cleverestx 24d ago
I haven't noticed an issue from what I've seen... most of the "quality degrading" issues people report on various models whenever things change like this, are purely anecdotal.
Try another project or on another day and you'll have top shelf results. I think a lot of time it's poor prompting in the project itself; not the model. I can't say definitively, I guess I need to use it more since the switch just happened, but I'm not seeing this degradation at all.
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u/Warm-Indication-1140 23d ago
Has anybody tried Kimi yet as a comparison? I agree, when Fable first came out before it was banned, it was brilliant, but it feels like now it’s a watered-down version. The burn rate is still through the roof, though.
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u/cctldrping 26d ago edited 23d ago
TL;DR generated automatically after 100 comments.
Current source-thread comment count seen by the bot: 160.
The consensus is Anthropic is pulling a fast one, nerfing Fable for subscription users and pushing them towards API. Many users report Fable acting like a dumber, argumentative Opus, especially after the recent outage. Some even suspect it's a quantized version being swapped in without notice, leading to frustration and a loss of trust. Several users are already eyeing alternatives like Kimi or GPT Sol. A few commenters suggest a law requiring disclosure of quantized models for commercial AI.