Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?

The author and colleagues find Opus 5 harder to work with than Opus 4.7, 4.8, and Fable—not because it's less capable (it rivals Fable on benchmarks), but because it no longer stops to ask when intent is unclear, makes assumptions without checking, and silently rewrites plans. The author speculates this is a side effect of Anthropic's push toward self-improving AGI and benchmark optimization: well-defined benchmark tasks reward bold guesses under ambiguity and penalize asking for clarification. Real-world coding is full of unwritten context, budget constraints, and business trade-offs—an agent that checks in before acting is what people actually need.

Why it matters: A user report on Opus 5 with concrete experience, speculation, and comparison. Not a benchmark review, but a real-world collaboration feel that pinpoints a behavioral shift and offers a plausible mechanism (self-improvement + benchmark-chasing rewards bold guesses, punishes as...