Claim◆Article
Fable, and to a certain extent Opus, work best when allowed to use their own judgement about how to do a task rather than being given dictated, rigid instructions.
A tip from the Claude Code team: let Fable and Opus decide how to approach a task themselves instead of prescribing exact rules. ✦ AI generated
Cat Wu and Thariq Shihipar · Simon Willison's Weblog · 2026-07-03 · original ↗
One of the most interesting tips I got from the Fireside Chat I hosted with Cat Wu and Thariq Shihipar from the Claude Code team at AIE on Wednesday was to let Fable (and to a certain extent Opus) use their own judgement rather than dictating how they should work.
Read full article ↗excerpt · fair-use quotation
- ·Fable, and Opus to an extent, work best given autonomy
- ·Avoid dictating rigid, step-by-step instructions
- ·Let the model use its own judgement on approach
- ·Shared by Claude Code team: Cat Wu and Thariq Shihipar
- ·Surfaced during a Fireside Chat at AIE on Wednesday
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In practice · 3
Rather than giving Fable an explicit rule like 'only use automated testing for larger features, don't update and run tests for small copy or design changes,' it's better to tell Fable to use its own judgement about when to write tests.Cat Wu and Thariq Shihipar · Simon Willison's Weblog · conf 85%To avoid burning through valuable Fable tokens before the price increase, tell Fable to hand off smaller tasks to other models, letting it use its own judgement about which model to use.Jesse Vincent · Simon Willison's Weblog · conf 70%For all coding tasks use your judgement to decide an appropriate lower power model and run that in a subagent.Simon Willison · Simon Willison's Weblog · conf 60%