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Comment by overgard | Hacker News Reader

Well, in the brief window that I got to test Fable 5, my brief review is: somehow an (already specced!) minor feature in my 150k loc codebase ended up costing.. $153! For like, an hour or two worth of work and maybe 8 or 9 requests overall. I'd say it was not remotely worth it.

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I asked it to tweak the fonts/colors of a very very simple static page and it blew through $35 (which is a lot for me lol; it's 10 days of my monthly codex plan).

You shouldn’t be using Fable for that, that’s Haiku work.

I think they were hoping for more advanced model’s more advanced “taste”

This is common sentiment amongst many users

I will never understand why people recommend using models with the capabilities of early 2025.

They cannot even move 10 existing lines of code around without breaking it in the process half of the time.

I very much doubt they are up to the task of implementing any sort of plan with a reliability that allows to complete the work faster than writing the code by hand.

If I used a racecar to go 25mph in a residential neighborhood, I’d make a similar conclusion.

It was made available in my subscription so I tested it out. I'm glad I tested it in a subscription, since I'd be pretty irritated if I had spent that amount of money accidentally in API usage. I guess what I've learned is what I already know, which is that the newer models seem to increase costs a lot with no perceptible benefit to my workflow.

Wait, so it didn't cost you $153? Are you just extrapolating based on what it would have cost in API usage?

I said "cost", not "cost me". I use `ccusage` to track what my unsubsidized token spend would be since I'm sure these subscriptions won't stick around forever and I want to have a realistic idea of what these things actually cost in a professional setting.

To be fair though, even if it's not costing me that much it's evidently costing Anthropic a pretty penny, I'm up to like $800 in spend on my $200 subscription in less than a week.

What makes you think the API based cost is the cost to Anthropic?

Well, they're selling a non-essential commodity in a highly competitive industry with about zero lock in or customer loyalty, using the standard VC playbook of "capture the market then worry about costs". I don't see space for large margins in there, and if there are margins they're probably recent because of the IPO.

So you're assuming their subscriptions are subsidized?

Yes, heavily.

Hard agree

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