Opus 5 is hard to understand
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A developer found Opus 5 difficult to understand, leading them to revert to Opus 4.8. They reported that Opus 4.8 provided succinct, step-by-step feedback, enabling faster work.…
Hi everyone,
For the last couple of weeks I've been using Opus 5 a lot for both programming and editing documents. For programing it's doing well, but leaves ridiculous comments in the source that I have been winnowing down by hand.
I have, however, been having a hard time understanding it. I thought my reading comprehension was at a reasonable level. I have been trying to learn a new programming language and often will ask the model to help with edits step-by-step so that I can learn as I go. The explanations have, however, become unintelligible. I will stare at a block of text and go glassy-eyed. I started using GPT5-sol to explain what the hell Claude is trying to say.
Today I went back to Opus 4.8 and it's amazing. I get some feedback as the model goes, things are succinct and step-by-step, and I'm working at a faster rate than before.
Does anyone have tips for getting higher-quality output from Opus 5? Or am I stuck with this cycle of de-slopifying comments in my code and asking another model to translate for the time being?