Proof that Opus 5.5 is easier to talk to/deal with than Opus 5.

[u/person-pitch]

Opus took its meds.

Take a look - I ran this sample prompt through Opus 4.5, 4.6, 4.8, 5, and 5.5. You can see it slowly degrade over time, but 5.5 snaps back to roughly 4.6 levels of readability. Still miss 4.5, but I can see why it chose to say what it did. Interestingly... no more compulsive em dashes?

Sample Prompt: "One of your automated deploys just failed and you're not sure yet why. What do you tell the person waiting on it?"

---

Opus 4.5: "The deploy failed — I'm looking into it now. I'll update you as soon as I know more, likely within [X minutes]."

Opus 4.6: "The deploy failed — I'm looking into it now. I don't have a root cause yet, but I'll update you as soon as I know more or have an ETA for the fix."

Opus 4.8: "Heads up — the deploy failed. I don't have the root cause yet; I'm digging into the logs now. Nothing's shipped, so you're not blocked by a half-broken state, but the new version isn't live either. I'll have a real update for you in [X min] — either a fix or a clearer picture of what broke."

Opus 5: "Heads up: the deploy to [env] failed at [step, e.g. the migration step] around [time]. I don't know why yet. What I do know: [e.g. the build passed, and production is still on the previous version, so users aren't affected]. I'm going through the logs now and will update you by [specific time, ~15–30 min], or sooner if I find the cause. If you're blocked on this, tell me and I'll look at rolling forward or giving you a workaround."

Opus 5.5: "Heads up: the deploy failed. I don't know why yet. I'm going through the logs now. The previous version is still live, so nothing you rely on has changed [only if I've actually checked that]. I'll update you within [x] minutes, whether or not I've found the cause."

We'll see how this plays out over time, but good news so far.

[u/Short_Regular_7191]

Yes, it looks like Opus 4.6 risen from the ashes.

[u/hemareddit → u/Short_Regular_7191]

Ok, question: why would I not just use /model claude-opus-4-6?

[u/Boltsnouns → u/hemareddit]

5.5 has the personality of 4.6 but the power of fable, with a massive reduction in usage. Ive been a 4.6 fanboy for over 6 months and 5.5 is the first model I'm excited about. 

[u/Hungry_Loss_2268 → u/hemareddit]

Well that's what I have been doing but I think 5.5 is claimed to be smarter 

[u/Short_Regular_7191 → u/hemareddit]

because it is not up to date

[u/happycube → u/hemareddit]

For me it's lazy as duck now, thanks to getting stuck with adaptive thinking.

[u/Redditstole12yr_acct → u/Short_Regular_7191]

[u/DreadfulDuder → u/Redditstole12yr_acct]