When to reach for Fable 5

Fable 5 is the most capable model we've put our hands on — a million tokens of context and reasoning that thinks before it answers by default. The temptation is to point it at everything.

We don't. Most of the work — classifying a ticket, pulling fields out of a PDF, a tidy refactor — runs faster and cheaper on a smaller model, and the answer is exactly as right. We reach for Fable 5 when the task is genuinely hard: a long-horizon migration, a knot of constraints, a design with no obvious shape yet.

"With AI" means pairing judgment with generation — and judgment includes knowing when the expensive model earns its keep. A sledgehammer is a wonderful tool. You still don't use it to hang a picture.