I compared the writing style of Opus 5 vs Fable 5, and Opus 5 continues many of the "Claude-isms" of its 4.8 predecessor in a way that Fable broke away from. Opus 5 still uses "carry the argument", "worth stating plainly", ", and the trap", "The X matters more", the use of "move" We need an "annoying English" benchmark. - Fable 5 Max: https://gist.github.com/deet/3d97f854b48eac6658d642fa18bb24d... - Opus 5 Max: https…
Fable might be using those phrases less, but its writing is still terrible and exhausting to read.
For quickly parsing the agent output, it's formulaism isn't a bad thing.
Fable's writing does have a property of going over my head, which didn't happen with earlier agents. Asking for clarification doesn't really give good results.
We've gone full circle where I once again use classical search just to look up what the fuck it's yapping about. It's much quicker and more accurate to take a glance at Wikipedia, than to ask the agent.