Fable is back

and there's a new sonnet

Jul 02, 2026

Hey folks,

When I was in Greece, I needed to organise a taxi from the airport home. I pinged codex and 1m37s later it was done, I got a text to say the car was booked.

Codex also added the redacted bit to this image

It’s not the most impressive task by all means but there’s a system as to why it works (and this system is how a lot of tasks work).

So first, all my day-to-day agent conversations start in my ‘bites’ folder, which has links to files that store my memories, what I’m working on, ben’s bites, about me etc.

Codex loads my AGENTS.md and my task then gets to work.

It’s got the default Google Calendar and Gmail tools connected, so starts with looking at if my flight is in my calendar (which it was, thanks to another Codex thread I did pre-trip). Finds the trip and then looks in my emails for any prior task/transfer emails, finds one to get my home address and the company I used on the way out (these could also be noted in my folders’ files, in a ‘TRAVEL.md’ file, linked from my AGENTS.md).

So now it’s got all the details it needs, this is the ‘agenty’ bit, it’s gathered enough context to complete my task. With that context it determines the next thing to do: make the booking. It knows the tools it has available to it, like computer use, so it went on to the taxi’s website (I had my computer stay on all trip so I could connect), filled in the booking form and made the payment.

Working with agents is a lot about making sure the right context and tools are available to do the task. If both are covered, agents can get stuff done without you interfering.

We have to think about tasks in this way - what would an agent (or a person) need if they had no knowledge of you or your task? It’s your job to make sure it’s available.

Let’s get to it.

p.s. I wanted to shout out my friend’s first business he launched solo - Fixxa - voice quotes and invoices for UK tradespeople, with WhatsApp delivery and Stripe links.

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Headlines

Fable 5 is back for all paid users. Anthropic’s blog post mentioned stronger guardrails in this re-release, but I haven’t hit any of them yet. Fable 5 is only included in the subscription plans till July 7 and you can only use 50% of your limits on Fable. This benchmark claims Fable can do 16% of remote work projects, double the amount of Opus 4.8.
- Theo has quick tips on getting the max out of Fable in the next 5-6 days.
Before Fable came back, we also got Claude Sonnet 5 - it’s benchmarked close to Opus 4.8 on most agent tasks, and cheaper on a per-token basis, but in practice it costs roughly the same as Opus per task. It is now the default for Free/Pro, available in Claude Code and API, and has launch pricing of $2/$10 per million tokens until Aug 31. Mine and others’ experiences with it is it’s expensive and slow, I can’t see it being something I use over other models.
Two new Gemini media models: Nano Banana 2 Lite and Gemini Omni Flash. Both models are available in the Gemini app and API. In the API, Nano Banana 2 Lite gives you fast (under 4 seconds) and cheap images (~30 images at 1K resolution for a dollar). Omni Flash lets you generate and edit videos at $0.10/sec.
Bridgewater and Thinking Machines trained a specialist model. It hit 84.7% accuracy on financial triage at 13.8x lower cost than the best frontier model tested. Factory’s Droid Shield 2.0 also fine-tuned two detectors to catch exposed secrets in sessions and reduce false alarms.

My feed

Modelence Mobile Builder - build native mobile apps by chat, using the same Modelence auth and backend. (portfolio company)
Browserbase Agents - one prompt or API call for browser automation in a hosted harness.
Safari MCP - let agents use Safari to open tabs, debug pages and catch Safari-only bugs.
Option AFK - Wispr-flow alternative with local transcription (nothing leaves your device), ability to transcribe multi-hour files and a CLI for your agents.
Claude Science - Mac/Linux workbench for scientists with code-backed figures, 60+ scientific skills/connectors and more. In beta for Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise.
Ramp PorTAL - move fine-tuned tasks between models at about half the usual cost.
xAI Voice Agent Builder - no-code Grok Voice agents at $0.05/min.
plain-writing-skill - rules for agents to write plainly, with an HTML diff of what changed.
Bond - AI chief of staff for founders and execs that tracks context, blockers and follow-ups.
Interfere - watches production, investigates issues and fixes problems before users notice.
AI-native PM leverage - how PMs move from text help to prototypes, PRs and evals. (course)
/wizard - skill to build interactive CLIs for annoying setup tasks.
Understanding agent-written code - a case for still knowing what the code does when agents write it.