I hate Opus 5. It’s the best model, anyway.

I’m tired of new models. Every week there’s a new benchmark, a new frontier intelligence claim, a new thing to test. But here we are, because Opus 5 just dropped and I’ve had real hands-on time with it, so you’re getting the honest version. 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 *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._

Claire Vohost

Jul 24, 202624mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: July 24, 2026
Duration: 24m
Channel: How I AI
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

I’m tired of new models. Every week there’s a new benchmark, a new frontier intelligence claim, a new thing to test. But here we are, because Opus 5 just dropped and I’ve had real hands-on time with it, so you’re getting the honest version. 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:*
Why I think we’ve hit an intelligence overhang and what that means for which model variables actually matter now
How Opus 5’s “neurotic” personality showed up in real coding sessions, including a merge conflict it refused to touch
What I learned from asking both Opus 5 and GPT‑5.6 Sol “who’s smarter, you or me?”
Where Opus 5, GPT‑5.6 Sol, Sonnet 5, and Gemini 3.1 Pro actually landed on the HIA benchmark leaderboard
The one use case where Opus 5 earned straight 5s from me
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 *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._

SPEAKERS

Claire Vo
host
Host of the podcast/channel “How I AI,” covering AI tools, models, and workflows.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of How I AI, featuring Claire Vo, I hate Opus 5. It’s the best model, anyway. explores opus 5 excels in benchmarks, but its “Claude slop” frustrates Claire argues there’s an “intelligence overhang,” predicting near-term competition will shift from raw capability to speed, cost, and usability as new frontier models arrive weekly.

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