Welcome, humans.

AI Independence day just came early, as late yesterday afternoon Anthropic announced Fable 5 is coming back online today. 

Technically, that means U.S. export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 were lifted, with Fable 5 returning globally later today on July 1 and Mythos 5 access expanding through approved partners.

That’s a big deal because Fable 5 had become the model people were treating like some forbidden power locked away. Before access disappeared, Matt Shumer used it to build an explorable, screen-accurate 3D Hogwarts castle from one prompt

And now, a dash of cold water: Rob Hallam called it "happy, but mostly disappointed," since routine coding now gets flagged more often and access is capped at half of weekly limits through July 7. Welcome back, have fun, but not for long...

Here’s what happened in AI today:

… and a whole lot more that you can read about here.

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😼 Claude Sonnet 5 brings Anthropic’s agent push to the default model

Every AI lab wants you to hand more work to agents. The catch: agents get expensive when they need the giant model, and riskier when that model starts touching browsers, terminals, codebases, and company data.

Anthropic’s answer is Claude Sonnet 5, its new default model for Free and Pro users, built to plan, use tools, code, browse, and run longer tasks without needing the pricier Opus tier.

Here’s what happened:

How to try it:

Why this matters: Sonnet is the model most Claude normies actually touch. Opus is the fancy chef’s knife, while Sonnet is the one that lives in the drawer and actually gets used for Tuesday dinner. Congrats Chef, you have a better everyday knife! Yes, Chef!

The “this is huge” camp is posting real task wins. One non-coder said Sonnet 5 helped him build five web apps in 10 minutes. Another user praised its agentic follow-through after it investigated a bug, wrote a reproducing test, fixed the issue, and verified the result without extra hand-holding. GitHub’s early Copilot tests also leaned positive, especially for CLI-style coding tasks.

The skeptical camp is staring at the bill. Theo and others flagged that Sonnet 5 can cost more than Opus 4.8 on some benchmarks once you count actual token usage, even if the sticker price is lower. Rohan Paul highlighted the same effective-cost problem. David Shapiro complained it goes off-task and lectures too much.

Although, TBH, a model that writes the bug fix and then gives you a TED Talk about why bugs are bad is very Claude-coded.

Our take: Sonnet 5 is Anthropic trying to make agents boring in the useful way: cheaper, safer, and default. But Fable 5’s return makes the timing awkward. Power users are already asking whether Sonnet 5 is the practical daily driver, or just the model you use while waiting for the restricted frontier model to come back. Don’t mind me, I’m just gonna smash that Claude app refresh button until the Fab 5 is back online…

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🎓 AI Skill of the Day: Turn One Repeated Task Into a Claude Skill

If you keep re-explaining the same workflow to Claude, you’re doing the boring part manually. Package that routine into a reusable Skill instead.

A Skill is basically a saved instruction set Claude can follow again later: your role, process, rules, output format, and “please stop doing this weird thing” preferences. As Mr. Buzzoni pointed out, the people getting more leverage from Claude are moving from one-off prompts to repeatable systems.

Try this today:

Save the output somewhere handy. Next time, start with: “Use my [Skill Name] Skill on this input.”

Have a specific skill you want to learn? Request it here.

The Neuron AI Explained: AI Still Sees Like a Toddler. Andrew Dai Wants to Fix It

AI can write code, pass exams, and summarize the internet. But visual reasoning is still one of the biggest missing links in AI development: models can label what is in an image, then fall apart when they need to reason through diagrams, tangled cords, floor plans, robots, product designs, or the physical world.

In this episode, Corey and Grant talk with Andrew Dai, co-founder and CEO of Elorian and a former Google Brain/DeepMind researcher, about why today’s models still struggle with visual understanding and what “visual chain of thought” could unlock. Watch the episode here.

🍪 Treats to Try.

📰 Around the Horn.

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📖 Midweek Wisdom:

A Cat’s Commentary:

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