They'd probably claim "well, it's not an A/B test then, because we are pre selecting for a specific user type who signs up for this".

I don't think that's an excuse, but it is likely the reasoning.

Probably won't work for Anthropic because they likely want a larger assortment of users and use cases.

Then they should suffer the consequences of not delivering what users paid for.

You would prefer they experiment on everyone at the same time without a control group? Think about your answer.

No, they should not change the model at all when you select the model.

No improvements to prompts, tooling, harness between model releases? Is this really what you want? I don't think you've thought this through at all.

[delayed]

Please make your substantive points without crossing into swipes or putdowns.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don’t think I said anything about prompts, tooling, or harnesses.

The model itself should not be substituted(for example, quantized) without an explicit SKU change.

Oh brother, do I have news for you...

They can get away with it because they are so far ahead of OpenAI models for coding, it's not like you can switch to anything else if you don't like it. Astra is even worse than nerfed Opus 5.5.

Pretty much the only alternative is loading up some credits and using Fable.

[delayed]

My experience is that 6.1 Sol is a little behind Opus 5.5 but it’s in spitting range. Their cost per task is generally higher, but if you’re on a quota plan the difference in cost doesn’t really matter until you’re paying API rates.

Both get the job done these days. I still hate Opus 5.5’s output, 6.1 Sol does an acceptable job of doing a second cleanup pass to it.

Astra when it hit the ground felt like “A Fable monent”: it was so good and concise and just was done with whatever task in a short time, where opus and fable sometimes can take forever. I think it lasted a week or two until it started to deteriorate to where we are now. Coincided nicely with the stopping of codex20 subscriptions etc.

Sol/Astra are sweet but they also have pretty much no discipline or executive function, which is where Opus 5.5 comes in, and I've not seen that capability in it nerfed too bad in my experience.

I have high hopes for Carbon here -- Argon is not quite Opus 5.5 but it's pretty darn good.

How can you even tell? Like, what's an experiment I could run right now which would would prove it to myself.

Yes this is the experiment I have been running for a while, that shows the constant comments on Claude models here have to be push from Claude team friends...The experience of output of OpenAI models is consistently better.

1)- Get a coding task and get the output of Opus and Astra.

2)- Open a new session and ask each other to review in detail the solution from the other model without mentioning where is it coming from.

3)- After the review, ask the original model to comment on it and state which solution is better and if the criticisms are valid...all in a new session.

4)- At the end Opus and others from Anthropic always end up agreeing the OpenAI model solution is better. My human review agrees.

After doing this for a few weeks...and consistently having their models rating higher the OpenAI solutions...I cancelled the Anthropic subscription...

Isn't this inherently task/domain/programming language/even prompting style specific? Why can't other people have genuinely different experience than you?

Nice try Amodei, but buying openai or anthropic credits is equivalent to just setting your money on fire.

DeepSeek, Qwen.

Yep, just one hour ago I again reached my weekly limit on claude code (3 days till reset btw), using Fable as Head-Orchestrator + Codex sub-agents via custom mcp.

I tried $20 of usage credits as a test once the limit was reached.

I shit you not, it lasted for less than 5 minutes.

Yeah it's a compete joke/scam. I bought $200 of credits once... gone in an hour. Never again. Part of me is thinking they decreased usage partly to force users to buy credits before the IPO... but at least in this case they ended up losing a user.

I get 5x more done (of equivalent quality) on my opencode go + DeepSeek flash sub for $40, than $200 anthropic sub.

Have you had a chance to try DeepSeek as a Orchestration/Manager for sub agents?

I have been using DeepSeek flash for a few projects and it is actually crazy capable, And I don't think I have spent $20 via api in a month yet.

Yeah it works great, maybe not quite as good as opus 5, but it's literally 20x-50x cheaper, and several times faster, an extra review/refinement loop per task brings the work up to opus level while still being much faster and cheaper overall. I have my own setup/tool (which I hope to open source soon) for planning/tasking/tracking which I found helpful to keep things on track an not forget/redo things - regardless of model - essentially tasks, dependencies/hierarchy, priorities, requirements, and task completion evidence tracked in the repo in structured plaintext/markdown files. DeepSeek was able to very easily understand and follow the workflow right off the bat.

Ok, thanks, I'm going to try to setup the pi harness and add on some needed extensions for my workflow. I'd appreaciate any advice in regards to any addons you would recommend if you have them.

If you aren't pay per token, then they can do whatever they want.

A bit like "You can order the steak for $75, or you can have whatever the chef is making for $30"

Eh sometimes it cuts the other way, like when Opus 5.5 was being shadow-routed on Opus 5. I am on a team plan and seem to not get any of these A/B tests.