HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is it just me, or is Opus 5.5 another step change?

1 points by consumer451 ↗ HN
This feels like another moment, like earlier this year. I am thrilled for my use cases in the applications that I sell, but it honestly scares the crap out out of me.

Is "the exponential" and actual thing?

24 comments

[ 12.9 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] thread
A_D_E_P_T
Yes, Opus 5.5 and Astra-6 are big improvements over Opus 5 and Sol-5.6. I'm at a point where I can automate much of my workflow, even for complicated tasks, which I could never do before.

Also the new Xiaomi model, Mimo v2.6, is outstanding as a light and cheap model. For coding, the new meta is using Astra-6-Max for orchestration and architecture, and Mimo for grunt work.

m4rtink
No. Next question ?
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
grim_io
It's less shit, so that's good I think.
smnplk
yea, apparently you dont need to know Rust
nr378
Yep, I'm personally finding Opus 5.5 to be the first real leap I've felt since Opus 4.5. The time-to-first-token seems dramatically better in Claude Code compared to Fable 5.1/Opus 5 as well, which really helps both interactivity and also overall time-to-completion.

It also burns Claude subscription quota much more slowly than Fable, which is nice.

brianwawok
Feels like a faster and cheaper fable, which yes is a big jump.
tkgally
I’m also finding Opus 5.5 to be a significant advance. In the past few days, I’ve given it several complex tasks related to two long-term dictionary-building projects [1, 2], and it handled them impressively—similar to Fable but with much lower token consumption. It also communicates better than Opus 5.1; I don’t think I’ve seen any obvious Claudisms yet.

[1] https://www.tkgje.jp/

[2] https://tkgally.github.io/eex-dict/index.html

JojoFatsani
I just love that it knows how to form its thoughts into meaningful statements without rambling again.
sznio
It's the first model that I feel I can just use freely without crashing into the 5 hour limits. I just manage to get my work done and still have tokens left over
jryan49
I have Opus 5.5 running subagents for the last 20h without any input from me after developing a plan and it seems to be going well somehow... but I will find out soon...
MoneyLovesSpeed
20h with no input is insane

at that point the hard part is just trusting it didnt quietly go off track somewhere imo

jryan49
I've been checking it and it's doing great I'm sure there are some bugs but it's doing a huge bulk of tedious simulation logic for my game. I was previous in the loop quite a bit but I found myself never having to redirect it so I tried the here a giant plan /loop until its done
KellyCriterion
First of all, I consider it very expensive, somehow in the range of Fable:

I activated Opus 5.5 when the invitation popup showed up, and Im already paying as a pro-user - nontheless the usage of Opus 5.5 charged massivly additional on the last few days, around 12-13 USD per day.

Im still fine with Opus 4.6 or 4.8 for daily development.

moomoo11
astra on ultra still blows it out of the water
fullstackwife
I stopped thinking that much about quota usage, there is less of accidental +10% weekly quota in 5 minutes.
Ebrahim6677
well, not really , it is not that much of big step.
iliedanila
I find that Opus 5.5 compared to previous versions (after 4.6) is the first update in the right direction.
muzani
Anthropic's naming convention seems to follow an S-curve. So Opus 5 is actually a little worse than 4.7, but by the time it hits 5.5, it's at the steep part of the new S-curve.

Similar with Claude 4 being worse than 3.7, but peaking at 4.5. At 4.6 they started to hit the restrictions and 4.7 seemed to patch what they made worse.

parkv11
"Personally, I felt that Opus 5.0's performance dropped a bit right before 5.5 was released. When 5.5 came out, it felt slightly better than the 5.0 at that time."