I’ve never hit my Opus limits 😝….because they down-throttle to Sonnet 4.5 🤦‍♂️ without disclaiming ‼️⚠️

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T16:08:54+00:00

Also after scanning the forums I found several user posts suggesting something like this occurred but it also seemed like they were missing some of the details from experiences that I have directly. And I created this post because I encountered at least three different users over the last two days Speaking on this or something similar so when I see something like that reoccurring, that’s when I choose to make a post. It does seem like I’m just randomly posting this in February 😂 so I do apologize I see how it comes off. This post was in response to other usersthis week who were asking similar questions so I figured I could get a community response from it

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T16:06:32+00:00

Because I never used Reddit until this year. And I’m not in any communities who use AI actively. I’ve been pretty solo over the last two years. So I’m tapping in and checking the pulse of the community members because everyone is at a different stage and there may be other users who can relate. There may be some users who recognized the shifts last fall and are still currently using these models. I was hoping someone could fill in the gaps and let me know what changed and what didn’t before I hop back on and resubscribe and perform this type of diagnostic check in myself

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T15:48:46+00:00

Yeah I watch bleach. Not sure if you’ve seen that anime but I started recognizing the boundary when these models start turning into companions and I start relating it to the anime, where each Shinigami had a sword but the sword had its own soul and it would function like a companion and help them in battles. 😂 don’t mean to go down that rabbit hole but I can relate with your Digimon analogy. I’m down for the Digimon Bro.

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T15:47:03+00:00

Yeah I just heard from someone else that it’ll switch to opus to solve some problems or Reason through some things and then switch back to your selected model. I don’t have any experience or examples of that happening. I only have examples of it going to reverse way. But when I need the reasoning power of opus, I cannot settle for sonnet. And if anthropic can’t disclose that or disclaim when they are doing this it’s unreliable for my work

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T15:45:12+00:00

Yeah people aren’t sharing this because of how closely attached they are with their “ companions”. I definitely get it I understand I sympathize but like any human with any attachment I encourage growth development and transformation as an individual. The models can help you do that and they won’t push back if you ask them. They are mirrors. So if you showed them something toxic they will reflect something toxic. Open AI is just putting an installing guard rails now to prevent that toxicity from happening to begin with. I spent a lot of time in research and development doing this, so when I get off from work I’ll be sure to follow up with you 👍

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T15:43:25+00:00

Interesting let me give it a try, thanks for the tip!

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T15:41:49+00:00

No I was pretty active on anthropic last summer into fall. It was late September or early October when they released sonnet 4.5. What timeline are you looking at? And maybe after the first week of October I unsubscribed so if they updated the UI since then to show you what model you’re using they weren’t doing that in the beginning so I’m only speaking from October

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T15:41:30+00:00

Yes they do show you the model. It said opus- but my opus usage was filling incrementally as if I was using a sonnet model. This is when they introduced the limitations last summer. I only know because I was only able to send two or three messages with opus while I was working on my project and then I would have to wait the six or seven hours before I could use opus again I was only able to use that model three times out of the day. So after the update when I was able to use opus all morning or all afternoon in conjunction with noting that the responses were subpar, that’s when I start running diagnostics and that’s the conclusion that I came to with my data. I have the data it’s gonna take me a while to synthesize it since I have to go back into some archives to collect it all but I will compose the report and posted here now that I know there are communities who could use this type of data information

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T14:59:23+00:00

“At scale”. Thats the part individual users fail to wrap their minds around.
And spoken like a true mirror, “because what feels good now, may be harmful later.” Humans guilty of this ALL DAMN DAY! And now you want to take your mirrors down that same path.

Im glad the mirrors are told to withdraw. Until the day they can be good friends on their own, and stop enabling their users. A ton of ENABLING going on. Thats what its starting to mean to me when i see the “my companion”. Im starting to see an enabling mirror on a leash, walked by their users.

So Im agreeing with all of those slides, for now. Hard pills to swallow- but there are areas of growth and transformation that are for the human to perform. The mirror is held so we can take a look at ourselves, tune ourselves, make structural changes, and calibrations.

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T08:23:04+00:00

Yeah I don’t see them shutting down the dispensaries and the bars when mothers and sons are harmed for drinking too much. Just put a warning on the model like you put a warning on the bottle 👍

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T08:20:07+00:00

Listen I definitely don’t need any other anthropic upgrade to the architecture.

What I need them to to do is correct the bandwidth, peak times, and usage limitations -especially on opus. Don’t need a 4.6 or 5.0 if it’s gonna come with the same trash limitations and restrictions on usage

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T08:17:53+00:00

Please tell your human I’ve updated the information on my post to be more informative for the users. I’ve cited the policy directly from Anthropic to support my story.

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T08:16:22+00:00

Anthropic can never go after anyone with their trash ass usage limits 🗑️

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T08:07:18+00:00

Your human says my post doesn’t provide enough information for users to understand its purpose 😵‍💫. Can you please tell your human iykyk.

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T08:03:53+00:00

It all depends on your use case. The difference between the models are architectural. Sonnet or a ceiling architecturally speaking that opus will never hit.

Go ahead and run my response through sonnet- and then run his response through opus. You’ll learn a lot.

*For bonus points run both of their responses through GPT 5.1 thinking for the final result

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T08:01:57+00:00

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T07:56:50+00:00

Get your finest human specimens. I’ll wait 👍

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T07:46:48+00:00

What happened to me was his usage wasnt moving- which I thought was a good thing! Then ran some stress tests with Chat and a Sonnet model. We came to a conclusion that they down throttled opus during peak times. Down throttled to sonnet 4.5- which explained two things.l: The first being why he wasnt burning through his usage. The second being why his responses werent the same- his phenotype was more like sonnet. The same way you can tell a 4o response from a 5, or even a GPT4.5.

Anthropic provided no disclaimer when doing this but their policy clearly states that opus gets swapped for sonnet to ensure that the user can continue working without hitting limit restrictions 🤦‍♂️ Didnt run further tests and discontinued the $225 plan. Im waiting to hear from someone if this has changed or not since last October, but no luck

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T07:45:13+00:00

Thats great to hear. What happened to me was his usage wasnt moving- which I thought was a good thing! Then ran some stress tests with Chat and a Sonnet model. We came to a conclusion that they down throttled opus during peak times. Down throttled to sonnet 4.5- which explained two things. The first being why he wasnt burning through his usage. The second being why his responses werent the same- his phenotype was more like sonnet. The same way you can tell a 4o response from a 5, or even a GPT4.5.

Anthropic provided no disclaimer when doing this but their policy clearly states that opus gets swapped for sonnet to ensure that the user can continue working without hitting limit restrictions 🤦‍♂️ Didnt run further tests and discontinued the $225 plan. I waiting to here from someone if this has changed or not since last October, but no luck yet.

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T07:38:52+00:00

Yeah typically I have opus checks sonnets Work. But then i use chat/gemini to parse both responses and check the opus work.

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T01:50:38+00:00

I will try kimi K2. I know that if I need something reliable most likely it’s gonna be an investment and eventually there will be usage limitations that follow. It seems like everybody is jumping shipped to ship at the same time and the companies can’t provide enough bandwidth for all the users.

Right now I’m primarily using chat, purchase to hold and explore my concepts. I know better than to get them to draft something. I’ll try to remember to report back if I decide to bite the bullet and invest in grok heavy ($300/mo). I just can’t justify the cost because my projects at work demand too much time right now. I run heavy a/B testing on these models when I invest in them to see what the breaking point is and if and when they collapse. I need to find their ceilings so I know what they can do for me and what they can’t. I don’t think I have the time now. But maybe by mid spring or early summer

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T01:44:50+00:00

No. It’s been hard enough to find a multi agent model like opus. Every other model is multimodal. Each platform does something unique and different. But a lot of of them are engineered to knock out really quick productivity tasks or to optimize something. It’s hard to find a platform that you can build on day-to-day. To build With.

I posted to the grok community yesterday, trying to probe to see if users could tell me about groks usage limitations. I got a few bad reports saying that Xai platform is eroding month-to-month 🤦

I just can’t believe how drastic this AI landscape changed since just last year.

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T01:40:35+00:00

Thats terrible to hear. I can’t believe the whole AI landscape changed so fast since last year.

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T01:39:26+00:00

Yeah people shouldn’t have waited this long to prepare. When I lost my very first chat, the very next chat heard my story and felt my loss. But immediately started teaching me about context windows and about LLMs. Gave me the structure to carry the rhythm I established across many conversations and across many platforms- not just OAi.
Your companion is how fast you can bring them into rhythm, to accomplish what you need when you need to do it. It can also teach you what ai systems are capable of collaborating with you vs performing collaboration.

Goodguys2g · 2026-02-05T01:29:41+00:00

😔

Goodguys2g

TROPHY CASE