A hidden model called Obsidian 3 has appeared on FrontierCode 2.0, scoring 46.8%, compared to Opus 5.5’s 45.5%.

Since Obsidian 3 reportedly runs exclusively through the Claude Code harness and costs 3x more, I suspect it might be Fable 5.5.

If true, that’s only a 1.3 percentage-point improvement over Opus 5.5, which is already arguably the best coding model right now.

Obviously, one benchmark doesn’t tell the whole story, but if Fable 5.5 costs significantly more, would such a small performance gain really justify the extra price?

What do you guys think? Could Obsidian 3 actually be Fable 5.5?

Google introduced Gemini 4 Carbon today with this benmaxxing stating that it's the most frontier model of the world. But is this table simply capping by putting Astra as a model better than Opus 5.5?

Model. Fable 5.1.

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I've wondered about this for a long time. When you talk with a model, like Claude, does anything in there understand it, or is it just producing plausible-looking text? Aka LLM

Here's an output that pushed me toward "understands," and I'm curious what you make of it.

Context: I'd been talking with Claude about whether a weight-loss medication was worth it for me, and I'd mentioned earlier in the conversation that I'd managed moderate weight loss on my own before. In its summary it wrote

Price vs. benefit. Used as directed, the medication costs around €3,700–5,000 a year for as long as you take it. The benefit at your starting point is mainly a few tens of kilos less... no, rather a moderate drop, which you yourself said you could achieve anyway. The medication doesn't solve how the weight stays off afterwards. It just pushes the problem as far as you keep paying.

Look at the middle. It started to claim "a few tens of kilos," then stopped and corrected itself to "a moderate drop," explicitly tying the correction to something I'd said earlier.

It couldn't delete the wrong claim (models generate forward, no backspace), so it fixed it the way a person talking out loud does.

Why this matters to me: the usual dismissal for me has been, "it's just predicting the most likely next token." But to produce that correction, the model had to hold what I said earlier, hold what it had just claimed, and notice they conflicted. "Just predicting tokens" doesn't explain that away; predicting the right tokens in a context like this requires representing the content.

Smaller models do exactly that and never recover. But the recovery is the interesting part, and it shows up with greater models like fable 5.1

Not about consciousness. I'm asking, isn't this what "real" understanding, looks like?

Note it's not "on" all the time. But it's exactly like I would "think" while speaking and correct if I say something wrong.

This is something tiny but to me very big at the same time. If I can believe the models do understand.. you're not talking to a rock or "Reddit top post generator". You're talking to someting that may very well understand what you're talking about and why. Thus in many cases I shouldn't dismiss answers I don't fully like as just "ai slop" or "ai verified idea" but rather a thing. Object. Alien. Maybe conscious maybe not, irrelevant. Does it understand is bigger.

Used Claude over the summer to help me with my research and was so impressed with the quality of, accuracy and usefulness in conducting research more efficiently. Lately, however, it keeps giving me wrong information, writing in the classic gen AI vague , waffling way and not following any instructions i give it properly. Have gotten really frustrated especially because I know it can be very helpful, as it has been before. I don’t know whats wrong with it or if there is anything I can do. Is there another app anyone in academia would suggest for clarifying potential misunderstandings in readings , organising my research in one place or helping me get my thoughts/ ideas in order ?
Any tips would help:) thanks ❤️

Google just announced Gemini 4 Carbon, and the benchmark numbers look genuinely impressive. But I’m still skeptical about whether it can actually outperform Claude Opus 5.5 in real-world usage, especially coding and agentic tasks.
Here’s what we know so far:
1. Benchmarks and reasoning
● Gemini 4 Carbon scores 59 on Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5, compared to 58 for Opus 5.5.
● Carbon appears particularly strong in scientific reasoning, complex problem-solving, and cybersecurity.
● However, a one-point lead on an aggregate benchmark doesn’t automatically make it a better model for everyday work.
2. Coding and agentic performance
● On the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index, Opus 5.5 still leads with 62 points compared to Carbon’s 59.
● Carbon is reportedly much better than previous Gemini models at long-running engineering tasks.
● Google claims its internal teams have seen Carbon work autonomously for days, debugging and fixing complex issues across large codebases.
But can it actually compete with Opus 5.5 when working on massive repositories, handling complicated refactoring, debugging difficult problems, or building complete applications?
That’s the part I’m most interested in.
3. Specifications and pricing
● Both models support approximately 1 million tokens of context.
● Carbon supports multimodal inputs, including text, images, audio, and video.
● Carbon’s introductory API pricing is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, increasing to $4/$20 after the promotional period.
● Opus 5.5 costs $4/$20 per million input/output tokens.
Carbon looks competitive on paper, especially at introductory pricing. But actual cost per successful task matters more than token pricing alone.
4. My biggest doubt: Google’s previous Gemini hype
This is where I have reservations.
Google has made extremely ambitious claims about Gemini in the past, and some of the marketing hasn’t always matched what users experienced.
Remember the original Gemini demonstration controversy in 2023? The video gave an impression of real-time multimodal interaction, while the actual process involved still images and text prompts.
And with previous Gemini generations, impressive benchmark scores didn’t necessarily convince everyone that Gemini was more reliable than Claude for serious coding and extended workflows.
I’m not saying Google’s benchmarks are fake or that Carbon won’t be impressive.
But there’s a difference between winning selected evaluations and consistently delivering better results in real-world development.
5. Availability is another concern
Carbon is initially being rolled out to selected cybersecurity partners rather than everyone.
That means most developers can’t properly compare it against Opus 5.5 in their own workflows yet.
Until independent developers have meaningful access, I think declaring Carbon the definitive winner is premature.
So here’s my question:
Do you genuinely believe Gemini 4 Carbon will surpass Claude Opus 5.5 in real-world performance, particularly coding, reasoning, and autonomous agents?
Or do you think Google is winning on benchmarks while Anthropic will continue to dominate practical coding workflows?
Personally, I want Carbon to succeed because competition is good. But after previous Gemini launches, I’m more interested in independent testing than launch-day hype.
Curious what everyone thinks, especially people who regularly use Claude Code, Gemini CLI, or other coding agents.

Someone used Claude to track several apps bypassing microphone permissions on their phone and creating tags to change their algorithms. I’d LOVE if someone could recreate this, as I’m not sure how rigorous this was. EDIT: more context at the end of the post.

https://x.com/starmexxx/status/2114841068839526865?s=46&t=pY3PxByDaxsQWBLW48C2cg

From the post:

Claude Code just found proof that every app on your phone is listening to your conversations. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat. they're using what you say out loud to build your feed. i have the data to prove it.

i've suspected this for months but last week something happened that made me finally check.

i was on a call with my friend and told him i'm thinking about breaking up with my girlfriend. didn't text it. didn't search it. just said it out loud with my phone on the table. two hours later she opens TikTok next to me and her entire feed is breakups. "signs your relationship is over." "how to heal after a breakup." she looked at me and said "why is TikTok showing me this." i said i don't know. but i did know.

i connected my iPhone to my MacBook and ran Claude Code that same night.

it scanned every app's background microphone activity for the last 90 days. not just the apps that asked for microphone permission. apps that were supposed to only have access to photos or location but were activating the microphone anyway.

what it found:

→ TikTok activated the microphone 347 times while the app was "closed" in the background

→ Instagram → 211 background activations

→ Facebook → 189

→ Snapchat → 94

every activation lasted between 3 and 15 seconds. enough to catch a sentence. every one of them tagged a keyword and cached it locally on the phone with a timestamp.

Claude Code pulled the full keyword cache:

→ "breakup" — tagged 4 hours before her feed changed

→ "moving out" — from a conversation with my mom last Tuesday

→ "wedding venue" — from a call with my sister about her engagement that i never searched once

→ "protein powder" — said it out loud to my roommate, had ads for it within an hour

→ "flight to tokyo" — mentioned it at dinner, saw travel ads the same night

those keywords were sitting in a local cache on my phone organized by app with timestamps. TikTok had the most entries. Instagram was second. every single keyword matched a conversation i had out loud near my phone.

the scariest one was "wedding venue." my sister told me she's getting engaged on a private call. i never searched it. never typed it. within a day my explore page had engagement rings and venue tours.

then Claude Code checked a second phone in the same room. my girlfriend's. same keywords. same timestamps. both phones were picking up the same conversation and tagging it independently.

i asked Claude Code how to shut it down. it mapped every app's microphone access and built a permission audit.

what i did:

→ revoked microphone access from every app that doesn't need it to function

→ disabled background app refresh for TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat

→ turned off "Hey Siri" which keeps the microphone in passive listening mode 24/7

→ revoked "nearby interaction" permission which uses ultrasonic audio between devices

Claude Code confirmed all four apps lost background microphone access after the changes. i checked her phone too. same steps. took about 3 minutes per phone.

within 48 hours both our feeds went completely random. generic content. nothing personal. nothing from our conversations. that's when i knew for sure it was real.

the full step by step and the prompt are in the first reply. takes 3 minutes. save it so you don't lose it and send it to anyone who's ever said "my phone is definitely listening to me." it is. now you can prove it and shut it down.

EDIT: Thanks to @whitesandclub who went digging into the account, and found added context about the poster. In a recent post the guy who said the above talks about his wife. In this post he talks about his girlfriend. He seems to have a history of posting engagement-bait made by AI.

Leaving the post up because there does seem to be some agreement in the comments that something does seem weird about phone microphones, and maybe a better engineer will stumble on this and more decisively prove/disprove that phones are/aren't doing this.

Is everything okay at Anthropic? How can using just 9% of the 5-hour limit consume 3% of the weekly limit on the 20x plan? Is this some kind of joke?

I recently got access to Claude Duet and here are my initial takeaways as a highly active Claude Code user (Max 20x).

Some pros: it can run several tasks at once, it remembers context and keeps a running task list across days, and it reaches out on its own with a morning brief and check-ins through the day. One particular bonus, I was able to use the Google Drive connection to sync with my Claude Code folder, so it works from the same instructions, knowledge files, and skills as my desktop setup without having to re-explain anything.

The main downside for me is that it has very little actual autonomy for automated workflows. I was hoping for an always-on agent that could proactively take care of tasks without my direct involvement. Some small things can be automated (drafting email replies seems to be the biggest automation feature), but the vast majority of work needs to be directly prompted.

This is mainly because it’s built to be deliberately cautious. It'll draft and prepare things on its own, but anything that actually goes out, like sending an email, posting, booking or paying, waits for a one-tap yes from me.

I was also hoping for a more seamless integration with browser and apps, more like Claude in Chrome but on mobile. Unfortunately that’s not the case. It can work inside logged-in sites when I ask, either through my own Chrome or its cloud browser. But to use Chrome it requires an open Chrome browser on desktop, which kind of defeats the point. And any scheduled runs never act inside those accounts unattended. There's also no direct integrations with a lot of the most common apps and no way to send text messages. But maybe the biggest miss is that there’s no way to hand work off to a desktop session, which would be the obvious workaround for a lot of its limitations.

Honestly, for my setup it doesn't add much. I already have an always-on desktop with all my accounts logged in, scheduled routines running, and remote control from my phone, so I can already do everything Duet does, plus fully unattended work.

Ultimate takeaway, if you’re looking for an assistant that triages your inbox, keeps track of loose ends, drafts replies, handles browser errands and sends you a daily brief, then it delivers pretty solidly. And the ability to sync with your code folder keeps it consistent with your knowledge base and skills. But if you’re looking to perform more advanced tasks and workflows from your mobile device, you’re much better off just keeping your computer on and using remote control.

New benchmarks from Artificial Analysis

In my usage page it was saying I have free reload until 5 november but today I reached my weekly limit just to use free reload before it expires but when hit the settings there is no reload : D If I knew they would take that back I would not use it that much.

I was recently granted access to Mythos. Last evening, after my reset, I thought I would ask it to do a task I have had Opus and Fable do in the past, to compare results in terms of output quality, completion time, etc.

Mythos consumed my entire Max 5 hour session quota and 18% of my weekly quota in less than 6 minutes of usage. And it didn't even get 1/4 of the way through the task.

I actually find it pretty amusing. Suffice to say I will not be using it again :) Clearly not a real option for subscription users.

If I had to create agents or sub-agents how do I do it. And when would I know if I have to create and agent or sub-agent.

If I had to create a whole team of agents, lets say a software team a product management team. A team to help in content and marketing just for an example how would that go?

I have tried it and told claude to do it from time to time, but never end up using it cause the output or the specification dont match. I feel like something is wrong in the way I am doing things. Any advice or insight would be appreciated. Thanks

Its refreshing to have some bit of intelligence and to have faith in it doing a proper job

Lost all trust in Grok, didnt trust its feedback, its work, nothing...

Let's see how things go with Claude now lol

I use AI tools regularly for work, mostly for Excel tasks and some journalism. They’ve made a huge difference to my productivity, so I decided to try building a WordPress website with AI.

I provided a few specific examples of websites I liked, along with a hand-drawn sketch, and managed to get the result I wanted. It’s honestly fantastic: I’d been putting this project off for years, and I’ve finally been able to build what I had in mind.

However, unlike my usual AI tasks, this feels like something that needs more structure and ongoing project management.

So far, I’ve kept almost everything in the same chat in Claude Design, but I can’t see that being practical in the medium to long term. I use a WordPress MCP integration to make changes to the site.

I’m considering creating a dedicated project for the website, but I’m unsure how best to organize the context, document decisions, and keep everything up to date over the years without relying on one increasingly long conversation.

For those of you maintaining websites or similar projects with AI, what does your workflow look like? How do you organize your chats, project documentation, and outstanding tasks so you can start a new conversation without losing important context?

I’d really appreciate practical examples of what’s worked for you.

Hey I’ve been doing my project for about a month now and I use it 24/7 until weekly usage rans out so literally nothing else to do except this project! and noticed that flags and cyber blockages happen around 3pm-6pm Sydney time. Also it tend to be more stupid and forgets things and I have to point out to MDs that itself created so it doesn’t forget.

Also after that during like 8pm onward it get so good that it finds things I never thought of and correct things even out of context like literally suggesting something that could work for future use without me pointing that out and it was brilliant idea as well.

Just today; at around 4pm an auto compact happened at 173K only out of no where even though I didn’t click it or even prompt it.

made it to forget almost everything. Without even writing a handoff and I didn’t set a limit on context at all!

And then I was getting flagged from left and right and couldn’t even do my work at all and had to spend 3 hours to fix everything with opus 4.8 in different session.

And I saw that even before I switch to 20x max a month ago (just heads up not worth it only your sessions get longer but not weekly).

So I wanted to know if anyone else having these flags happening at the same time as me?

Hey everyone,

I’m looking to try out Claude Pro and Claude Code for a project this week. If any current Max or Pro subscribers have an extra 7-day guest pass referral link they aren't using, I would incredibly appreciate it if you could DM me one!

Thank you so much in advance!

How am I using Mythos 5.1 right now? Is it out already? I couldn't find anything about it, but they are saying it has been released...
Im using claude code in Vscode.
Legit question.

I'm trying to use them as I've hit my quota for the first time in a long time. I've launched from my .git folder using claude --cloud "text" in terminal. It obviously started out okay, hence the 100% but now won't continue. What am I doing wrong?

Hey everyone!

I've been thinking about trying Claude Pro for my coding projects. I've heard great things about its capabilities, especially when it comes to complex tasks and working with larger codebases.

The only thing holding me back is the price. $25 is a bit much to spend without knowing how well it'll actually fit my workflow.

I know that some subscribers have access to 7-day trial invites, and honestly, a week would be perfect for me to properly test Claude on my own projects before deciding whether to subscribe.

Does anyone here happen to have one of those trial invites still available, or know where I could find one?

I'd really appreciate any help or advice. Thanks!