Do We Actually Need Fable 5? A Reality Check on Frontier AI

Short summary

The author argues that frontier LLMs like Fable 5 are often unnecessary for everyday coding tasks, drawing an analogy to smartphone cameras that hit a 'good enough' plateau. Cheaper, slightly older models handle most workloads at a fraction of the token cost. The recommendation is to reserve frontier models for genuinely hard bugs or major architectural redesigns.

• •Frontier LLMs have reached a 'good enough' plateau similar to smartphone cameras
• •Cheaper models like GPT-5.5 handle most coding tasks adequately at lower token cost
• •Reserve frontier models for difficult bugs or major architectural redesigns

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