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Claude Opus 5 had a strange first week at Every. It argued with instructions, stopped before the work was done, and fought the systems we’d built for earlier Claude models.
Then we deleted them.
With less process, Opus 5 sometimes got dramatically better. It built strong software, worked through bugs for hours, and produced more rigorous knowledge work. The less we told it how to work, the more capable it looked.
Our Vibe Check asks whether Opus 5 is disappointing—or whether the workflows it broke have become part of the problem. We tested it across coding, writing, knowledge work, and agents, with results that made the model hard to place.
Opus 5 doesn’t reach Fable’s ceiling, and it isn’t as easy to use day to day as GPT-5.6 Sol. Its best work may require rebuilding systems that already work. The full review explains what we would change, where the model surprised us, and who should bother making room for it.
Dan Shipper is the cofounder and CEO of Every, where he writes the Chain of Thought column and hosts the podcast AI & I. You can follow him on X at @danshipper and on LinkedIn.
Katie Parrott is a staff writer at Every. You can read more of her work in her newsletter. To read more essays like this, subscribe to Every, and follow us on X at @every and on LinkedIn.
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