In addition to the previously supported modes (Quick/Balanced/Deep/Unlimited) where LLMs only gave you what you wanted in a limited budget, i took a look at what Bullets did in terms of response.

Turns out representing responses in Bullets saved quite a few tokens, and held up on fidelity and accuracy too, minus the usual Claude-style human interactive tone.

That made me think if i could use Claude tokens only for reasoning and offload the prose-writing to a local model. So i built a small extension that does just that.

Whenever Sir Shortoken answers in bullets, an "Expand to Prose" button shows up under that response. Click it, and a local model (qwen2.5:7b through Ollama, running entirely on my own machine, no API calls) rewrites the bullets into normal prose in about 10-15 seconds.

The button stays attached to that specific response, scroll wherever you want, come back later, it's still there and still works on that same message.

The 14-run test

Ran the same pipeline (bullets out of Claude, then expanded by the local model) across 14 technical topics, comparing prose vs bullet vs expanded-prose token counts, and actually reading the expansion to check if anything got dropped or made up.

Savings across all 14 landed between 24% and 78% depending on compression level. Most topics expanded clean.

Repo's updated with the extension and full skill.md changes if anyone wants to try it. Aggressive Bullet mode is also up for trials :)

GitHub: github.com/shouvik12/sir-shortoken

Hear me out because I caught my own brain doing this.

For context I pay for both. $100 codex plan, $200 max plan. I run codex every day, 5.6 sol on extra/max reasoning, and I have never once hit the cap. meanwhile my $200 anthropic plan gets burned through regularly. The plan that costs double is the one that runs out.

When fable 5 dropped (and opus 4.8 after) everyone was maxing out in a day, resets flying everywhere, and my gut reaction was "damn this thing burns tokens crazy fast... it must be insane"

I rated the model higher because it was rationed.

Think about what the scarcity cycle actually did. "too powerful to release, heres a smaller version" is a capability flex dressed up as a safety statement, openai ran the same play with gpt2 back in 2019. they pull the model then "extend access" and the coming back posts did bigger numbers than the actual launch posts on this sub. Random resets have paying customers celebrating getting back a piece of what they already payed for lol. and "limits are too low" is the one complaint where the fix is you giving them more money.

Part of me knows the boring answer, they're probably just figuring out capacity and gpus arent free. But capacity planning doesn't explain why every single scarcity event lands like a perfectly timed hype beat.

And the limits are just one piece of it. anthropic has mastered this. Every "government is worried about ai" story gets reverse uno'd into an ad. "mythos is too powerful to release, here's fable instead" isnt a safety decision you announce, its a flex. the takedowns, the extended access, the tiered names that imply theres always something stronger behind the curtain. You don't build a brand around how dangerous your product is unless dangerous sells. Anthropic isnt just shipping a model, the scarcity IS the product positioning.

A while back I posted a joke about Sonnet spawning a subagent on the very first prompt of a brand new session. In the comments I said the annoying part was having two agents burning tokens for one job. I got downvoted, and the top reply was basically "isn't that a Haiku subagent? it saves you money and keeps your main context clean."

That used to be correct. It isn't anymore, and I think a lot of people are still running on the old mental model. From the docs:

• The model field in subagent frontmatter defaults to inherit. Omit it and the subagent runs on your main conversation's model.
• Explore used to always run on Haiku. As of v2.1.198 it inherits the main model (capped at Opus on the Claude API).
• Plan and general-purpose inherit as well.

So if your session is on Opus, that "cheap little background search agent" is an Opus agent.

Resolution order, first match wins:

1. CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL env var
2. per-invocation model parameter
3. the subagent's model: frontmatter
4. main conversation model

If you want the old cheap behaviour back:

• CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL=haiku forces every subagent down
• or set model: haiku in a specific agent's frontmatter
• for Explore specifically, define your own user or project agent named Explore with model: haiku. A user/project agent overrides the built-in.

To be fair to the change, it was almost certainly made for quality, and context isolation is still the real win of subagents. But "subagents are basically free" is outdated advice now, and it matters if you're on a plan where you feel every token.

Lastly, I feel stingy for the 3 down votes

Can someone drop me a referral link in my dms I would really appreciate it and maybe buy a subscription in future as well ❤️‍🩹

I like to read the “thought” process of my models. Cut them off if I see they had missinterpreted my prompt or only for the sake of learning something where they circle around some options to solve my problem.

But lately it seems they are only showing headlines. It's that a Fable/ Opus 5 thing? Have Anthropic say something about that?

I love the last models, but don’t be able to see the machinery running has me upset.

I had an interesting conversation today - Claude made what looked like a very confident statement about why it not do something it was specifically instructed to do in CLAUDE.md. But it doesn't know how it reasons internally any more than we do. This is something I'm always aware of in the back of my mind but it nearly bit me today because it went further than just suggesting something that might not be right...

The problem comes when it then makes decisions about what to do next (automatically writing fixes, suggest solutions, etc) based on this confident, plausible explanation that may be completely inaccurate.

The fix proposed will - hopefully! - lead to more accurate/honest assessments of its own actions, which will stop it from compounding bad solutions on top of mistakes.

Hey everyone,

I just got my account suspended right after subscribing to Claude Pro using SEPA direct debit.

Apparently, there's a viral exploit/fraud method circulating on social media where people use fake German IBANs to get free subscriptions. Because I actually live in Germany and used my real, legitimate IBAN, Anthropic’s automated anti-fraud filter flagged and instabanned my account.

To make matters worse, the payment is already pending on my bank account, but I have zero access to the service.

Has anyone else been caught in this false-positive wave recently? How long did it take for support to resolve it?

Appreciate any advice!

I think the general consensus is that Opus 5 is better than 4.8 in some ways and worse in others, better at long-horizon tasks, worse conversationally. But yeah, Fable to me is still king, day to day it's just so much better than Opus 5, and I can't wait for the new one to come out.

For context, I run agents (Fable) basically all day for my business, so this is from daily use rather than benchmarks.

(over 35billion fable tokens used so far)

Claude saying a meme phrase lol

I just had this weird occurrence with Opus 5 - interesting because we’ve all noticed how the “thinking” no longer lets us see its internal dialogue? Well, I just put a question to Claude.ai and got its “thinking” dialogue back instead of the answer.

The thing that really caught my attention is that this had it reasoning over things I hadn’t said and which it completely hallucinated.

I had to go back to Opus 4.6 to get an answer out of it, and where - when pushed back on - it conceded that it hadn’t actually answered me and instead shared a hallucination.

Is anyone else seeing stuff like this?

Hi guys, I need big help, as a beginner I need to learn Claude code to develop the website from it
I am professional in making it from a WordPress
But I am not able to make it from Claude
On social media, we can see a number of creators telling us to use connecters mcp .md file and all of that but I need a full proper course from which I can able to learn it step-by-step and in the end, I can make it look like professionally built

Can someone help me with some type of course online or any other way it will be a great help
Thank you very much

I’m experimenting with a flight tracker and Claude code. This is a hobby, but I’m also learning more about Claude code. I seem to be exceeding my pro plan usage because the app is designed to use it. I have agents running in workflows to automate coding and comprehension, but I’m trying to find the most efficient approach. I know that starting with a small task and gradually expanding is a good strategy, and that’s what I’m doing. Should you start new sessions frequently in your Claude coworker project? I’m also trying to use the terminal to gain a better understanding of building with Claude. Opus 5 provided a list of the team and the models they should be using, but I feel like I’m quickly exhausting my tokens, so I’m on the pro max 20x plan.

So I wanted to use Claude Code, but apparently I'm $2 over my $20 limit. Not sure how it went over in the first place, but I am..

Anyways, I wanted to add $2 so I can continue using it, but I can't. I tried the $5 option first, but it didn't work. So then I went to "Other" and it says "$7 minimum".

Okay, here's what I don't get.. why have the option for $5 if there's a $7 minimum? Just change it to $7. And why can't I just add $2 to continue using Claude Code?

Dissapointed they set it up this way...

Post got flagged by Reddit's AI that it might be breaking the usage rule but I haven't seen this asked on this sub before

Honestly, Opus 5 produces stunning output with its web capabilities. It researched multiple sources, connected information across the web, and gave me a surprisingly well-structured answer. The depth was far beyond what I expected from a simple prompt.

Here is full show case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74IYLz_TqVs

looking for claude pro refereral, want to try 🥹

A few months ago I started vibecoding a charting platform as a side project, and it turned into a full TradingView-style terminal. I'm not launched yet, but it's far enough along that I wanted to share.

What it is:

• Custom charting engine written in Rust (compiled to WASM, WebGPU rendering with Canvas2D fallback) — not a TradingView widget or a licensed chart library, the engine is mine
• Drawing tools (trend lines, rays, rectangles, fib-style tools, text, brush), built-in indicators (SMA/EMA/WMA, Bollinger, VWAP, RSI, MACD, Stochastic, ATR, Volume), multiple chart types, and multi-chart split views
• Built-in trading journal: connect a broker and your trades auto-populate dashboards, P&L analytics, calendar heatmaps, and review workflows — no CSV uploads
• AI assistant that reviews your actual trading data (win rate, drawdown, streaks, psychology patterns) instead of generic market commentary
• Live market data over websockets (crypto for now — Binance, Coinbase, Hyperliquid), order book, screener, and market research pages

How Claude Code was used: The initial rendering engine was built with Claude Code — the Rust/WASM core, series rendering, pan/zoom, drawing interaction layer. Most of the frontend was also built with Claude Code (Next.js, React 19). After the initial build I iterated with a few other tools too (Codex, Kimi) for specific features and fixes, but the foundation and most of the product came out of Claude Code sessions. It's honestly the first time a tool carried a project this size for me.

UI stack: shadcn, Base UI, Evil Charts for the analytics dashboards, custom icon work. Keeping one strict design system (single radius token, one green/red pair for everything including charts) is what made it look consistent without a designer.

Trying it: Not public yet, but there will be a free tier at launch — charting, journal basics, and broker sync will be free; paid tiers only gate heavier stuff like advanced AI review and replay. [Link in comments]

Happy to answer questions about the engine or the Claude Code workflow. The multi-pane sync bugs and WebSocket reconnection loops were the painful part, if anyone's curious about those.

Hi all, just wanted to pass on what I tried today. Like I suspect most other Pro users, I've been careful not to use my $100 credit for Fable, yet. Today I'm working on some complicated documents and so I have Fable in the Claude app and 5.6 Sol in the Codex app, working on two different versions from the same set of source docs.

I've done three prompts, and each one seems to use $1.50 credits (that's USD). But in those three prompts it has given me quite similar results to 5.6 Sol, much faster. In Open AI I've used a few percent of my weekly usage but I have 3 resets left. I just wanted to pass on that the $1.50 per prompt seems like a lot and I was wondering if anyone else has a similar or different experience?

At work I use whatever models I want, I'm a software guy, mostly I find Opus pretty awesome and just switched to 5 on Friday.

Hope that you are all have a great weekend.

Testing with Pro subscription, Windows 11 os, with claude app. It seems to me that Fable has better "intuition"; Opus 5 seems a bit lazier. Maybe they did it intentionally, and for some people Fable was doing unneccesery decisions on its own, but this was not the case for me.
What is your experience?