4 ms·

Noticed that too. I wonder if these things just degrade over time, perhaps with the way it writes memories about my project as it goes

Espressosaurus 3mo ago
I’ve observed the degradation, but I suspect what’s happening is they’re tuning it for lower inference costs. Maybe turning down the amount of thinking, maybe quantizing, maybe something else. It seems like there’s a week by week and sometimes day by day change in performance when on a subscription plan using their harnesses.
- conception 3mo ago
  https://marginlab.ai/trackers/claude-code/ https://marginlab.ai/trackers/claude-code/ their tracker generally shows that isn’t the case. The only times I’ve seen it drop is something broken and just before fable launched.
  - nerdsniper 3mo ago
    I mean they could just be routing known benchmark questions (which all of SWEBench are) to a full-performance variant.
  - svnt 3mo ago
    Is this using the api or using a subscription, though? The incentives are different for each, and it isn't the least bit unexpected that they would maintain API access quality while 'optimizing' the subscription experience to improve their margins (or losses) It seems to do really this you would need to crowdsource it -- users individually give the lab access to a body of subscriptions normally used by average people, and the lab occasionally runs some masked version of the task through on diverse accounts.
- 8note 3mo ago
  i thought i had noticed a degradation, but it turned out claude code had swapped itself back to opus. might be the case for you as well
Gareth321 3mo ago
I feel like a conspiracy theorist but it feels like every new model release from both Anthropic and OpenAI has 1-2 weeks of fantastic performance then a gradual (and sometimes not so gradual) decline in intelligence. It's like they're quantising the model in the background to optimise for available compute/RAM. Which, if I put my MBA hat on, would make perfect sense. Why not halve the required RAM for "90%" of the performance? They get fantastic benchmarks and glowing reviews on release, then slowly squeeze more performance out of the model. By the time the next model is ready for release, the jump feels quite large again.
- xnorswap 3mo ago
  And yet: https://marginlab.ai/trackers/claude-code-historical-performance/ https://marginlab.ai/trackers/claude-code-historical-perform... There's clearly random variation, but it also shows each model release is just genuinely better. ( With the exception of a heavily degraded week of opus 4.7, which was acknowledged as a problem at the time. ) There's a psychology of getting used to models after being wowed by the new performance. It sets in as your new baseline expectations, and then when it doesn't deliver, it's felt more acutely. When it does deliver, it's just meeting expectations. Then a new better model comes along and it's a step up again, another wow moment for a week or two until expectations adjust to meet the new baseline.
  - jkman 3mo ago
    Remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal? It's completely believable that benchmark-resembling requests are routes in a favorable manner.
  - svnt 3mo ago
    I replied to the user above that referenced marginlab, but I believe marginlab uses the API. It is possible (arguably likely, in MBA-land) that the API and subscription accounts hit different sub-models. Even if they use a subscription account, surely Anthropic can tell which one it is.
- ACCount37 3mo ago

Espressosaurus 3mo ago

I’ve observed the degradation, but I suspect what’s happening is they’re tuning it for lower inference costs. Maybe turning down the amount of thinking, maybe quantizing, maybe something else. It seems like there’s a week by week and sometimes day by day change in performance when on a subscription plan using their harnesses.

conception 3mo ago
https://marginlab.ai/trackers/claude-code/ https://marginlab.ai/trackers/claude-code/ their tracker generally shows that isn’t the case. The only times I’ve seen it drop is something broken and just before fable launched.
- nerdsniper 3mo ago
  I mean they could just be routing known benchmark questions (which all of SWEBench are) to a full-performance variant.
- svnt 3mo ago
  Is this using the api or using a subscription, though? The incentives are different for each, and it isn't the least bit unexpected that they would maintain API access quality while 'optimizing' the subscription experience to improve their margins (or losses) It seems to do really this you would need to crowdsource it -- users individually give the lab access to a body of subscriptions normally used by average people, and the lab occasionally runs some masked version of the task through on diverse accounts.
8note 3mo ago
i thought i had noticed a degradation, but it turned out claude code had swapped itself back to opus. might be the case for you as well

Gareth321 3mo ago

I feel like a conspiracy theorist but it feels like every new model release from both Anthropic and OpenAI has 1-2 weeks of fantastic performance then a gradual (and sometimes not so gradual) decline in intelligence. It's like they're quantising the model in the background to optimise for available compute/RAM. Which, if I put my MBA hat on, would make perfect sense. Why not halve the required RAM for "90%" of the performance? They get fantastic benchmarks and glowing reviews on release, then slowly squeeze more performance out of the model. By the time the next model is ready for release, the jump feels quite large again.

xnorswap 3mo ago
And yet: https://marginlab.ai/trackers/claude-code-historical-performance/ https://marginlab.ai/trackers/claude-code-historical-perform... There's clearly random variation, but it also shows each model release is just genuinely better. ( With the exception of a heavily degraded week of opus 4.7, which was acknowledged as a problem at the time. ) There's a psychology of getting used to models after being wowed by the new performance. It sets in as your new baseline expectations, and then when it doesn't deliver, it's felt more acutely. When it does deliver, it's just meeting expectations. Then a new better model comes along and it's a step up again, another wow moment for a week or two until expectations adjust to meet the new baseline.
- jkman 3mo ago
  Remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal? It's completely believable that benchmark-resembling requests are routes in a favorable manner.
- svnt 3mo ago
  I replied to the user above that referenced marginlab, but I believe marginlab uses the API. It is possible (arguably likely, in MBA-land) that the API and subscription accounts hit different sub-models. Even if they use a subscription account, surely Anthropic can tell which one it is.
ACCount37 3mo ago