I hate Opus 5. It’s the best model, anyway.
Opus 5 just dropped and I’ve had real hands-on time with it, and now you’re getting my honest review. I hate it. I love it. This is my full Opus 5 review: personality analysis, live benchmark results from my 7-model How I AI eval, and an actual verdict on whether I’m swapping it in. Spoiler: the answer surprised me. *What you’ll learn:* 1. Why I think we’ve hit an intelligence overhang and what that means for which model variables actually matter now 2. How Opus 5’s “neurotic” personality showed up in real coding sessions, including a merge conflict it refused to touch 3. What I learned from asking both Opus 5 and GPT‑5.6 Sol “who’s smarter, you or me?” 4. Where Opus 5, GPT‑5.6 Sol, Sonnet 5, and Gemini 3.1 Pro actually landed on the HIA benchmark leaderboard 5. The one use case where Opus 5 earned straight 5s from me 6. My actual plan for using Opus 5 going forward *In this episode, I cover:* (00:00) Opus 5 is here (03:15) First impressions (06:12) Opus 5 vs. GPT‑5.6 Sol personality comparison (14:39) Claude Slop: the verbosity problem and why it makes my blood boil (16:55) How the How I AI benchmark works (7 models, 6 tasks, blind scoring) (18:30) Live benchmark results: the leaderboard reveal (23:25) My verdict and how I’ll actually use Opus 5 *Blog and detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode:* How I AI: My Surprising Verdict on Claude Opus 5 (After a Personality Test and a 7-Model Benchmark): https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/my-surprising-verdict-on-claude-opus-5 ↳ Generate High-Quality Front-End Prototypes with Claude Opus 5: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/generate-high-quality-front-end-prototypes-with-claude-opus-5 ↳ How to Conduct an AI Personality Test to Compare LLM Behaviors: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-conduct-an-ai-personality-test-to-compare-llm-behaviors *Tools referenced:* • Anthropic blog: https://www.anthropic.com/news • GPT‑5.6 Sol: https://openai.com/index/previewing-gpt-5-6-sol/ • Sonnet 5: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-5 • Gemini 3.1 Pro: https://deepmind.google/models/gemini/pro/ *Where to find Claire Vo:* ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/ Website: https://clairevo.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/ X: https://x.com/clairevo _Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._ _For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email jordan@penname.co._
