HN Explorer

Ask HN: How do I get Fable to acknowledge me?

1 points by bridgettegraham ↗ HN
Im using Fable for a lot of work, and I found it to flatout ignore questions I ask it while it works. Sometimes I can find the answer by turning on the transcript view so I can observe its thinking process, but if I don't do that, it almost never answers. anybody else? it annoys me more than I can express and I don't want to read all its thinking all the time. any advice? (im using the claude-desktop app. man I can't wait to get rid of fable - I hate using it, but its really good :-|

3 comments

[ 113 ms ] story [ 679 ms ] thread
gryfft
Use the /btw feature. If you talk while it's thinking, it takes what your say as steering, not as the next rung in the conversation. You can also hit escape to make it stop and acknowledge you.
bridgettegraham
yeah I know the BTW but often times the things I want it to do ARE, in fact, steering-related things. And yeah, I do interrupt it sometimes to force it to hear me out. Some of the questions I ask it are often also related to the work they are busy with at that moment and my questions are load-bearing. It just frustrates me so much that it doesn't do a simple "ACK". I with they were more open to pair-programming than INSISTING to do everything completely autonomously or agentic. The models continue to hallucinate and I often feel the need to steer them, but the more powerful the models get, the less interested it seem to get in my opinions/requests... Anyways... just my observation/frustration with Fable. Thanks for the reply.
bridgettegraham
Oh another issue with BTW is that is read-only - it can't influence or actually do ANYTHING other than respond in a readonly way. Sometimes thats not what I really want.