6 ms·

I think it’s hard to appreciate the capabilities of Fable unless you’ve run into a problem that you’ve spent days trying to get Opus to solve, but couldn’t. GP

I think it’s hard to appreciate the capabilities of Fable unless you’ve run into a problem that you’ve spent days trying to get Opus to solve, but couldn’t. GPT5.5 is better than Opus 4.* at everything except frontend, but Fable is good enough that I instantly re-subscribed to the $200 plan despite knowing that it’s just short-term limited access.

yodsanklai 2mo ago
Funny how the two top comments are contradictory. We need better than anecdotes to understand what the new models bring.
- neon_diogenes 2mo ago
  Here’s one difference I have seen. I forgot I had a multi-session audio probe running while trying to repro audio glitches, and Fable came back with: “your pops are already on tape.” Interesting choice of words. Phrased so casually. It picked a low-tech idiom that fit the situation instead of giving some sterile technical answer. That kind of language and context awareness never happened for me with Opus, or gpt 5.5.
- cyanydeez 2mo ago
  you're living in the age of AI; not AGI. Also, there's pretty much zero moderation on HN, so astroturfing is likely streaming through just as bad as reddit. It' sjust noit as obvious because it's a smaller scoped website.
- jfrbfbreudh 2mo ago
  I didn’t mention my case since it’s quite esoteric, but I am working on an application using the Apple RoomPlan API, which is very powerful but very limited in customizability. Opus simply couldn’t alter the scanning view for me, it would try things over and over and eventually started making up parameters and passing them hoping it would work. Completely failed, but I knew it was possible because a competitor app does it. Fable also failed, then added log lines (as did Opus, but Opus failed to do anything useful with them) and then reversed engineered the API, and made it work.
- jchanimal 2mo ago
  Since Fable, my legit infrastructure project has turned into the sort of thing I can do 95% on my phone. It’s reliable enough instead of doing big reviews, I’ve just been giving it smaller tasks, and dozens in parallel. I created a skill that’s focused on getting PRs merge-ready, and now my attention is fully back where it should be, on deciding what changes will make the product better. Our entire stack is Apache 2.0 open source, including the agent docs, so if you wanna try sitting at a higher level of abstraction, install the skill in your repo or just clone our whole project and start adding features: https://good.vibes.diy/blog/beast-mode-skill-for-claude-code https://good.vibes.diy/blog/beast-mode-skill-for-claude-code
  - dimitrios1 2mo ago
    This reads like a paid testimonial.
    - jchanimal 2mo ago
      If by that you mean I paid a lot to learn this. But at least I typed it with my own two hands.
      - dimitrios1 2mo ago
        I am glad! But you are indeed selling your own product here, correct?
        zsoltkacsandi 2mo ago
        This seems like a blog post with a link to a github repo. So I am not sure what product you are referring to.
    - aerhardt 2mo ago
      The website linked is an utter mess. In design and performance.
talon8635 2mo ago
We’ve really evolved quickly into simple vectors for a magical tool that solves our problems. Can’t solve the problem? There’ll be a new release soon that can!
tiffanyh 2mo ago
My experience comparing GPT-5.5 and Fable: GPT-5.5 is better for: - Strategic thinking - Long-form writing, including essays and white papers - Image creation - Code generation Fable is better for: - Using tools - Testing code - Working in live environments - Making changes to existing software - Creating polished PowerPoint and Word documents Fable’s tool access is its biggest advantage. It's hard to describe but Fable ability to access sandbox environments with way more tooling can quickly become a superpower in now workflows.
- OrangeDelonge 2mo ago
  Do you need to do all these things in your dayjob or are you just doing them to comapare these models
- int_19h 2mo ago
  Fable is great as a "manager" model (writing specs, opening issues, doing PRs, verifying fixes) while Codex cranks out the code. Especially if you tell it to roleplay as an Eastern European software engineer and "tell it like it is without consideration for anyone's feelings".
chasd00 2mo ago
> ..you’ve run into a problem that you’ve spent days trying to get Opus to solve do you have an example of this? If i can't get an agent to do something in a couple hours i do it myself.
- nijave 2mo ago
  Debugging. Memory leak hunting, figuring out latency issues For things where I'm not familiar with the code base, it can take days or weeks to become familiar with structure and flows. If I can get an agent to help visualize and analyze the architecture and zero in on a subset of code, that can be a huge win. For instance, we had some archaic "cache" that just dumped things into a static/module-level map. I tried a few different things to try to find it over the course of a few days and eventually gave Claude a Python REPL into a running process with pyrasite after some memory leaked and it traced through heap allocations and references to find the referent. It would have taken me probably 2-4+ weeks of just learning about Python heap to figure that out of my own.
  - killix 2mo ago
    [flagged]
- kittoes 2mo ago
  Not the OP, but I had Fable orchestrate this project. https://github.com/ByteTerrace/Puck https://github.com/ByteTerrace/Puck It has required constant hand holding, and there was the outage to deal with, but I can't argue with the end results. A fully deterministic recursive engine within an engine framework that includes a rendering VM, emulators, custom ROMs, and an in-game editor? Insane. Sure, it's nowhere near primetime but this kind of thing was unimaginable just a year ago.
- jfrbfbreudh 2mo ago
  Many, but I think that the model delta is only meaningfully convincing when experienced firsthand. Here’s an example of improvement when trying to solve the label placement problem (NP-hard): https://imgur.com/a/kCUZxPi https://imgur.com/a/kCUZxPi It’s also an example of something that I could not (and would not bother trying to) code up a solution / heuristic for.
hajile 2mo ago
This is like when a vacuum doesn’t pick something up after a few tries. The user picks the thing up, looks at it, then puts it back down and tries again until they finally give up and move it to the trash. If you can’t design a solution and instead waste days and who knows how much money in tokens instead of just turning on your brain for a few minutes, you are in the wrong profession.
- jfrbfbreudh 2mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808828 Tell me how you would design a solution for this in a few minutes. Or a few days. Would you even recognize that this is NP-hard?

yodsanklai 2mo ago

Funny how the two top comments are contradictory. We need better than anecdotes to understand what the new models bring.

neon_diogenes 2mo ago
Here’s one difference I have seen. I forgot I had a multi-session audio probe running while trying to repro audio glitches, and Fable came back with: “your pops are already on tape.” Interesting choice of words. Phrased so casually. It picked a low-tech idiom that fit the situation instead of giving some sterile technical answer. That kind of language and context awareness never happened for me with Opus, or gpt 5.5.
cyanydeez 2mo ago
you're living in the age of AI; not AGI. Also, there's pretty much zero moderation on HN, so astroturfing is likely streaming through just as bad as reddit. It' sjust noit as obvious because it's a smaller scoped website.
jfrbfbreudh 2mo ago
I didn’t mention my case since it’s quite esoteric, but I am working on an application using the Apple RoomPlan API, which is very powerful but very limited in customizability. Opus simply couldn’t alter the scanning view for me, it would try things over and over and eventually started making up parameters and passing them hoping it would work. Completely failed, but I knew it was possible because a competitor app does it. Fable also failed, then added log lines (as did Opus, but Opus failed to do anything useful with them) and then reversed engineered the API, and made it work.
jchanimal 2mo ago
Since Fable, my legit infrastructure project has turned into the sort of thing I can do 95% on my phone. It’s reliable enough instead of doing big reviews, I’ve just been giving it smaller tasks, and dozens in parallel. I created a skill that’s focused on getting PRs merge-ready, and now my attention is fully back where it should be, on deciding what changes will make the product better. Our entire stack is Apache 2.0 open source, including the agent docs, so if you wanna try sitting at a higher level of abstraction, install the skill in your repo or just clone our whole project and start adding features: https://good.vibes.diy/blog/beast-mode-skill-for-claude-code https://good.vibes.diy/blog/beast-mode-skill-for-claude-code
- dimitrios1 2mo ago
  This reads like a paid testimonial.
  - jchanimal 2mo ago
    If by that you mean I paid a lot to learn this. But at least I typed it with my own two hands.
    - dimitrios1 2mo ago
      I am glad! But you are indeed selling your own product here, correct?
      - zsoltkacsandi 2mo ago
        This seems like a blog post with a link to a github repo. So I am not sure what product you are referring to.
  - aerhardt 2mo ago
    The website linked is an utter mess. In design and performance.

talon8635 2mo ago

We’ve really evolved quickly into simple vectors for a magical tool that solves our problems. Can’t solve the problem? There’ll be a new release soon that can!

tiffanyh 2mo ago

My experience comparing GPT-5.5 and Fable: GPT-5.5 is better for: - Strategic thinking - Long-form writing, including essays and white papers - Image creation - Code generation Fable is better for: - Using tools - Testing code - Working in live environments - Making changes to existing software - Creating polished PowerPoint and Word documents Fable’s tool access is its biggest advantage. It's hard to describe but Fable ability to access sandbox environments with way more tooling can quickly become a superpower in now workflows.

OrangeDelonge 2mo ago
Do you need to do all these things in your dayjob or are you just doing them to comapare these models
int_19h 2mo ago
Fable is great as a "manager" model (writing specs, opening issues, doing PRs, verifying fixes) while Codex cranks out the code. Especially if you tell it to roleplay as an Eastern European software engineer and "tell it like it is without consideration for anyone's feelings".

chasd00 2mo ago

> ..you’ve run into a problem that you’ve spent days trying to get Opus to solve do you have an example of this? If i can't get an agent to do something in a couple hours i do it myself.

nijave 2mo ago
Debugging. Memory leak hunting, figuring out latency issues For things where I'm not familiar with the code base, it can take days or weeks to become familiar with structure and flows. If I can get an agent to help visualize and analyze the architecture and zero in on a subset of code, that can be a huge win. For instance, we had some archaic "cache" that just dumped things into a static/module-level map. I tried a few different things to try to find it over the course of a few days and eventually gave Claude a Python REPL into a running process with pyrasite after some memory leaked and it traced through heap allocations and references to find the referent. It would have taken me probably 2-4+ weeks of just learning about Python heap to figure that out of my own.
- killix 2mo ago
  [flagged]
kittoes 2mo ago
Not the OP, but I had Fable orchestrate this project. https://github.com/ByteTerrace/Puck https://github.com/ByteTerrace/Puck It has required constant hand holding, and there was the outage to deal with, but I can't argue with the end results. A fully deterministic recursive engine within an engine framework that includes a rendering VM, emulators, custom ROMs, and an in-game editor? Insane. Sure, it's nowhere near primetime but this kind of thing was unimaginable just a year ago.
jfrbfbreudh 2mo ago
Many, but I think that the model delta is only meaningfully convincing when experienced firsthand. Here’s an example of improvement when trying to solve the label placement problem (NP-hard): https://imgur.com/a/kCUZxPi https://imgur.com/a/kCUZxPi It’s also an example of something that I could not (and would not bother trying to) code up a solution / heuristic for.

hajile 2mo ago

This is like when a vacuum doesn’t pick something up after a few tries. The user picks the thing up, looks at it, then puts it back down and tries again until they finally give up and move it to the trash. If you can’t design a solution and instead waste days and who knows how much money in tokens instead of just turning on your brain for a few minutes, you are in the wrong profession.

jfrbfbreudh 2mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808828 Tell me how you would design a solution for this in a few minutes. Or a few days. Would you even recognize that this is NP-hard?