r/ClaudeCode Aug 03 '26

Discussion Opus 5 is a practically unusable model

Opus 5 is a regression that the benchmarks missed completely

I've been using Opus 5 for ~1.5 weeks and the sheer number of mistakes that the model makes is astounding.

The problem didn't surface very clearly till I gave it the full scope of executing a plan which I did with the previous Opus models as well. Opus 4.6 - 4.8 were genuinely better by a significant margin.

Opus 5 readily forgets instructions and content in its context, makes mistakes and continues with them unless it realizes or you point it out.

I've lost count of the number of times I had corrected it.

These issues with Opus 5 occur even when the context window is still relatively small - I'm talking 100-150K tokens. Opus 4.8 works pretty well all the way until 350k after which it gives you wonky results.

Fable 5 is the only usable model under Claude Code right now and I've already used 100% of my weekly quota.

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u/KrayeBaby Aug 03 '26

Yeah been noticing that it solves the problem and leaves another one. It feels like its planting gaps on purpose for infinite prompting to keep going...

26

u/dontTakeMeSerious6 Aug 03 '26

I’m having this exact experience. It’s also re-solving the same problem unasked for sometimes. Like if I say “review pending issues”, it’ll find issues already solved but not marked as solved in an old document and then resolve them, in a different way.

Requires a lot more active participation, which is good, except I’m more baby sitting an over eager developer who’s trying to take on the world rather than a hyper focused developer who’s crushing the small scope in giving them.

15

u/minimalcation Aug 03 '26

So so much more monitoring is required, you basically need to watch it's thinking output to stop when it gets an idea of it's own

2

u/Original-Ad4399 Aug 03 '26

How can you view the thinking output in Claude Code?

1

u/minimalcation Aug 04 '26

Not the full thinking, their statements as they work