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Fable 5 – Median thinking declined in August

428 points · 293 comments · espeed

  1. rcr-anti · · focus · HN ↗
    I&#x27;ve followed a few trackers, eg <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marginlab.ai&#x2F;trackers&#x2F;claude-code&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;marginlab.ai&#x2F;trackers&#x2F;claude-code&#x2F; , for awhile. For Claude Code the trend, it seems to me at least, is fewer tokens to do the same or better job. Prompt changes, tool ergonomics changes, etc.; I&#x27;d be shocked if they didn&#x27;t A&#x2F;B every release. Less thinking as measured by tokens isn&#x27;t necessarily bad if you can get the same results by making it think about the &quot;right&quot; things or structure. They obviously screw up sometimes, and I&#x27;ve always been suspicious with hidden tokens, but I haven&#x27;t found evidence quality intentionally degrades over time.
    1. user43928 · · focus · HN ↗
      Same. With some 500 hours of usage in just my project at home, across both the $200 Claude and Codex subscriptions, I have not once encountered a situation where I would have attributed unsatisfactory results to a degradation in the model.

      I&#x27;ve seen bugs in the harnesses, sure, but never anything in the actual model where I could have said with any certainty that it&#x27;s not just regular variation or me having a bad day myself.

      No idea where people get the confidence from to make such claims every other week.

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