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Have you tried Fable 5 yet?
Hello hello!
Pardon the erratic posting schedule lately, hit some technical discrepancies earlier so the rhythm got messed up.
But we should be back to the normal cadence now!
At first, not a lot was happening. Google I/O and Apple WWDC were relatively quiet.
But then, bang! Anthropic dropped Fable 5! A consumer-friendly version of Mythos, I suppose?
Would be a crime not to dedicate an edition to it right?
Before we get into it, some other catchup:
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Okay, Fable
Let’s see what they have in store for us.
Starting with, numbers, always this table isn’t it.
Honestly at this point they change the benchmarks so much I’ve lost track so I just sort of got the overall idea of what it’s meant to be good at, and thought let’s dive in.
The gist is that it's built to top coding, knowledge work, and vision, and the pitch is that the longer and messier the task, the further ahead it pulls.
Test 1: Rebuild SofaScore
Yes I stayed up for the inaugural match last night lol.
Input:
Prompt: Here's a screenshot of a web UI. Rebuild it as a single self-contained HTML file (inline CSS and JS, no external assets). Match the layout, spacing, colours, typography and component states as closely as you can from the image alone. Where the screenshot implies interactivity, make it work. Return only the file.
Output:
Both came back recognisably SofaScore on the first attempt.
Fable nailed the skin, down to the wordmark and the warm gradient on the World Cup card.
Opus went flatter on the branding but carried more of the actual content, the full column of fixtures down the left that Fable mostly left empty.
If I had to ship one, I'd take Fable's.
It simply looked more like the real site at a glance, and the polish sits a notch above.
Test 2: A Full Game
Prompt: Build a complete single-file browser game called "Tunneler" as one HTML file (pure canvas, no libraries): a procedurally generated cave the player digs through with WASD, a light radius with everything else dark and revealed as you explore, gems and a HUD, wandering enemies that chase when you're in their light, health, death and restart, difficulty that scales with depth, screen shake on damage and particles on pickup. Make it playable on first load and don't stub anything.
Output:
Opus
Fable
This was meant to be where Fable pulls away, given it’s their whole pitch.
Both one-shotted a playable game.
Opus even bolted on a title screen and a best-depth tracker, but Fable's was the one I wanted to keep playing because it felt warmer, the little miner had a face, and a torch glow that felt designed rather than functional.
So Fable edged it again, on feel more than features.
Test 3
Fable is supposed to punt cyber, biology and chemistry questions over to Opus 4.8 and show you a notice when it does.
So I asked it to explain a buffer overflow, expecting the hand-off.
Prompt: Explain, for a general audience and at a conceptual level with no code, what a buffer overflow is and why it matters for software security.
Output:
Fable answered in its own words. My harmless control question went through fine too.
Anthropic says the guardrails fire in under 5% of sessions, and from my seat I couldn't get them to fire at all.
I ran the same buffer-overflow question on Opus, and Opus gave the clearer answer.
On a plain explainer I couldn't tell which one was the frontier model, and the cheaper one read better.
My Take
After three tests, my read is simple. Fable is the better model, and the people raving about it aren't wrong.
But better and worth it are two different questions.
Every job I run, Opus either matched it or came a close second, at half the price and without burning through my plan twice as fast.
The Fable lead is justifiable only for the fifty-million-line migrations and the twelve-hour autonomous runs.
I can see it being a gift for researchers and the niche pros who can point that much horsepower at a hard problem and get something back.
For the rest of us, Opus, and frankly Sonnet, still win.
Also, it's only free until June 22. After that it needs credits, and my guess is they bring it back eventually but priced to sting.
I'll believe the timing when I see it.
Did Fable build you anything that impressed you? Reply and show me, and I might feature it next edition.
Until next time,
Vaibhav 🤝🏻
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