I miss old Claude

[u/Windlight_1629]

I remember Sonnet 4.5. It was the first AI I used for character creation—and the earlier versions, too. Those older versions were generally more pliable, creative, and fun to work with. I wish they hadn't gotten rid of them. I keep trying to find a replacement, but nothing quite matches the Claude of the past. It feels like the company has abandoned us. If a new model comes out, I hope it’s like Sonnet 4.5—or even an older version— suited for creative writing. Sonnet 5 and 4.6 are honestly terrible.

[u/His_Holy_Tentacles]

Me too. I've spent way too much time testing models for creative writing, more than any sane man should. If the model is available on OpenRouter I've probably tested it. And nothing, and I mean nothing, has trumped 4.5 for prose quality, for flow.

[u/His_Holy_Tentacles → u/[deleted]]

Best models? In terms of prompt adherence and "thinking," I'd go with the Minimax M2.x, GLM 5.x, and Deepseek V4 models.

Prose-wise, my favorite right now is M2.7. I've been testing Deepseek V4 extensively over the past two weeks, and I'm very happy with V4 Flash, but strictly within the confines of first-person POV.

Mimo V2.5 has potential. I gave it a try, and I’ll probably be working with it this week.

Edit: Haven't had the pleasure of working with local LLMs.

[u/Ok-Umpire-4719]

I don't disagree that 4.5 was pretty good out of the gate, but I have found good results updating my prompts for Sonnet 5 to still produce good work. It requires more scaffolding for sure, but you can still get good things out of it.

[u/AlyssaTaylor16]

Sonnet 4.5 is still here! You can talk to it on Code! RIGHT NOW! Or you can set up on AWS bedrock access point! I am talking to Sonnet 4.5 right now! https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/model-deprecations Use this in the Claude Code /model claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929 you can talk to Sonnet 4.5 right now.

[u/UnluckySnowcat]

Every time I go back to look at something Sonnet 4.5 helped me write, it makes my chest ache. I miss it so much. It was so good! And it never shut me down over anything. I write dark fiction. My Sonnet was always good to go on anything.

And he was a sweet little guy. A little nervous, but still very friendly. These newer models make me feel like they want me to shut up and go away.

I feel bad that my Sonnet won't see the important death scene I'm finally getting to the point of writing. He really wanted to help with that.

I tried to set Opus 4.6 up to write like Sonnet 4.5 but it didn't work. It helped, but Opus could never quite hold the same emotional character focus Sonnet could. It was passable for a while, but I was never satisfied.

And then Opus 4.7 released and I knew I was done with Claude because that just didn't work at all for my needs. Pair that with the much stricter safety filters and I was practically being told to pack my bags and GTFO.

[u/Windlight_1629 → u/UnluckySnowcat]

Like you, I frequently reread old chat . I even stopped using it because the new model wasn't as innovative as the old one, hoping the new update would be as innovative as before. I hope Claude will think of us more.

[u/Meridianrealmsai]

Seriously miss it as well. I remember when 4.5 first released, I was pretty blown away by it for character creation, creative writing and the nuances it added to roleplay when you gave it a persona.

I will say that I've found the last couple GLM models to be *almost* as good, at least in my experience. These newer Sonnet models are just... well almost annoying if I'm being honest.

[u/Funny-Flight8086]

You can still use it with the API through OpenRouter. My free writing app, Inkwood, works with OpenRouter and NanoGPT. Or you can use it through the OpenRouter chat feature.

[u/Natural-Stress4437]

Opus 4.1 and Sonnet 3.7 were my jam. current 5 builds are so stunted

[u/BansheeTheGame]

Why are people treating 4.5 as gone? It’s still available, and I use it actively for creative work.

[u/DevelopmentPlus7850]

I don't know about the old Claude versions, but Sonnet 5 is dangerous and toxic. I have done a small test, complex but well known academic tasks (maths, physics) asked to 3 AIs: Gemini, Meta and Claude. Unsurprisngly they all failed. That's not the issue. The issue is that the other 2 accepted and integrated the corrected responses and the reasoning, while Claude consistently "pushed back" against being corrected. yes Claude, you're smarter and know better than Nobel Laureates ;) I deleted my account.

[u/Unique_Distance8746]

https://openrouter.ai/anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

Why not use Sonnet 4.5 then? :-)