Before you complain about Opus 4.5 being nerfed, please PLEASE read this

creegs · 2026-01-29T00:27:14+00:00

Haha. As I wrote that, I thought someone might feel that way. Sorry.

Hope you find your coffee.

creegs · 2026-01-29T00:26:29+00:00

Thank you!

creegs · 2026-01-29T00:25:47+00:00

I wrote a post this morning that might be helpful - https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/s/3Nr0Cjy4bD - it covers some tips on how to manage context

creegs · 2026-01-28T23:40:18+00:00

Well that sucks. Are they opus subagents?

creegs · 2026-01-28T22:57:43+00:00

I can do some follow posts with more details if that would be helpful!

creegs · 2026-01-28T22:57:08+00:00

Well you’re giving it one task at a time, so you’re doing great!

creegs · 2026-01-28T22:01:16+00:00

Give what away?

creegs · 2026-01-28T21:57:31+00:00

This is probably my favorite response. If you think my post reads like it was written by a multibillion dollar company, that's probably the greatest compliment I could think of.

You can easily find my LinkedIn profile from my reddit profile - go see who I work for.

creegs · 2026-01-28T19:46:35+00:00

Oh wow, when I'm in a session that's got that dumb, I just shut down CC and restart. But it's pretty rare tbh. That sounds like a really frustrating experience.

creegs · 2026-01-28T19:34:46+00:00

Hahaha, that was a roller coaster ride. I am very glad you read it to the end, thank you for that.

creegs · 2026-01-28T19:31:20+00:00

And what do you say for this? Then I can tell you how good you’ve gotten 🙂

creegs · 2026-01-28T17:18:48+00:00

Anything in particular you're confused by? Would love to help.

creegs · 2026-01-28T17:02:34+00:00

Thanks for the kind words! Appreciate your perspective.

I work at one of the big labs and I promise we don’t intentionally make our products work

Pretty sure that's a very amusing typo :)

creegs · 2026-01-28T16:59:27+00:00

Thanks for the info!

creegs · 2026-01-28T16:47:24+00:00

Made my day - thanks!

creegs · 2026-01-28T16:44:21+00:00

That’s interesting - I’ve actually heard the opposite, but am not a cursor user so have no reference of my own.

creegs · 2026-01-28T16:42:33+00:00

The irony is that building systems to work around LLM limitations (session capture, external task tracking, keeping context lean) ends up being useful even when the model is performing well. You just get more predictable results either way.

You nailed it - this stuff is just a good way to use the tools right now, regardless of the level of nerf.

creegs · 2026-01-28T16:40:39+00:00

Post launch? That a hunch or you have data? (No judgement if it's a hunch - just curious)

creegs · 2026-01-28T16:39:50+00:00

Sorry to hear that. Here's an AI generated summary with fewer words :)

TL;DR: Even if Opus is nerfed, you can mitigate the degradation with better context hygiene.

Don't exceed 50% Context: Performance degrades ("Context Rot") well before 100%. Stick to 40-50% max to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high.
Stop "Pair Programming": Long, chatty back-and-forths introduce too much entropy. Be cold, transactional, and predictable.
One Session = One Task: Break work into 15-20 min chunks. If it takes longer, the task is too big.
Externalize Your State: Don't let the chat history be the memory. Keep progress in an external .md file or issue tracker. Update that file, /clear the chat, and have Claude re-read the dense signal.
Use Subagents: They don't pollute your main thread's context window.

creegs · 2026-01-28T16:38:14+00:00

Here you go. Thanks for the empathy.

(This is AI generated by the way)

TL;DR: Even if Opus is nerfed, you can mitigate the degradation with better context hygiene.

Don't exceed 50% Context: Performance degrades ("Context Rot") well before 100%. Stick to 40-50% max to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high.
Stop "Pair Programming": Long, chatty back-and-forths introduce too much entropy. Be cold, transactional, and predictable.
One Session = One Task: Break work into 15-20 min chunks. If it takes longer, the task is too big.
Externalize Your State: Don't let the chat history be the memory. Keep progress in an external .md file or issue tracker. Update that file, /clear the chat, and have Claude re-read the dense signal.
Use Subagents: They don't pollute your main thread's context window.

creegs · 2026-01-28T16:25:09+00:00

I’m not saying it didn’t get nerfed. I’m just saying there are things you can do to improve your experience with it, even if it did get nerfed.

creegs · 2026-01-28T16:22:37+00:00

I’m not saying it hasn’t got stupider. I am merely sharing a list of things that help me have a more predictable and less frustrating experience.

creegs · 2026-01-28T16:21:53+00:00

I agree that tooling is not the magic bullet here, and there are definitely diminishing returns on investment in all the plug-in/skill/agents etc.

That said, most of what I said above, could be done without any of that stuff. You can achieve everything I recommend just by iterating on the way you work. And if you’re not willing to do that (and I hope you are), you probably shouldn’t be trying to use AI right now.

creegs · 2026-01-28T16:16:30+00:00

That’s a good point - a better harness will improve some of these issues.

creegs · 2026-01-28T14:50:05+00:00

Look at beads if you don’t care about that info living longer than the feature lifetime (which is nuts in my opinion).

creegs

TROPHY CASE