AI ADVANTAGE - Issue No. 15

This Week In AI: Claude Fable 5

Some weeks we test everything, take screenshots, break stuff on purpose, and report back like the happy little AI lab rats we are but this week was not one of those weeks.

It's summer, which around here means half of us are out of town, the kids are home, my actual desk hours have shrunk down to whatever I can grab between a pool hang and a load of laundry. And right in the middle of all of that, Anthropic went and dropped another HUGE upgrade (or version) of Claude for us, everyday people to use!

So this week is a little different. Instead of "here is exactly how we used it," you are getting "here is the new thing, here is what we found when we went digging, and here is what we are watching before we spend real time (or real money) on it." Think of it as the honest-friend version, where we tell you what we know AND what we don't.

Opinion: AI Is Moving Faster Than I Can Keep Up With

If you are anything like me it feels like AI is moving faster than we can keep up with! So fast even I can’t keep up. And I say that as someone whose literal job is to keep up with it. It has been a busy week in a busy summer, with travel and family and a lot fewer hours at my desk than usual, and I have not even had the chance to fully sit down and play with this new model the way I normally would before I tell you about it.

Now, if you have been reading for a while, you know exactly how I feel about the people online who breathlessly review AI tools they have never actually opened (we did a whole issue on that). So I am not about to sit here and pretend I have put this thing through the wringer, because I haven't. What I CAN do is give you the gist of what I found, tell you what the folks who have been in it are saying, and walk you through how we are thinking about it, so you get to skip the twelve tabs I had open at 10pm.

If you remember anything from today (cuase likely you will forget 90% of what you read) remember this note: “You do not have to be first.” You do not have to grab every new model the week it launches. The business owners who actually win with AI are not the ones chasing every shiny release, they are the ones who understand what a tool is FOR and reach for it at the right moment. So let's see if this one makes sense for US and YOU before we spend hours playing inside.

Meet Fable: The "Do the Whole Project" Version of Claude

The new model is called Claude Fable 5, and the simplest way I can explain it (from what I have read) is this. The Claude you probably use every day is wonderful at answering a question or writing a thing the moment you ask. Fable is built to take a whole project and actually complete it, planning out the steps, doing the work, and then checking its own work before it hands anything back. So in my eyes, it seems like Fable is your project manager (crafting the plan), your contractor/employee (doing the work), and your project manager (checking the work). 

It is Anthropic's most powerful publicly available model right now, and from everything the people testing it are saying, it shines on the big, messy, multi-step stuff. Picture a full research project, a long client deliverable, a whole batch of website or sales copy, the kind of work that normally eats an entire afternoon of back and forth. Fabel was designed to do the dirty work from start to finish. 

Why did they launch it? Honestly, the same reason any of these show up, they are all racing to give us a model that handles heavier work with less babysitting. So EVERY DAY people can use it fully. And deep down, they need us to use it (and it to be easy) if they want us all HOOKED, which is the ultimate goal, like any business that never wants you to leave. I’m not here to pretend that isn’t the ultimate plan.

Now let's talk Pricing becuase as business owners, we have to be mindful of the budget!

What It's Going to Cost You

When you use Claude inside the app, you are not paying by the word, you have usage limits, kind of like the data on your phone plan. Fable is the premium model, and it chews through those limits noticeably faster than the Claude you are used to. So even when it is technically "included," it is not some magical unlimited buffet, and you will burn your allowance quicker if you point it at every little thing.

And then there is the timing, which has been a whole saga. As I am writing this, Fable is included in the paid Claude plans (Pro, Max, and Team) but only for up to half of your weekly usage, and only through Sunday, July 12. (Sorry, had I known I would have written this last week) After that, keeping it means switching on something called usage credits, which is a pay-as-you-go add-on billed at the higher rates, and it is not cheap (it is the priciest model they offer, roughly double the next one down).

I don’t know if it will get pushed out again. I already has once. It was July 7, but everyone got upset about losing it so fast, and Anthropic pushed it to the 12th. Which means by the time you are reading this over your Sunday coffee, or maybe catching up Monday, that free-inside-your-plan window is already closing (or closed!), and the date could very well wiggle again. So no, I am not going to tell you to PANIC and go spend your whole Sunday exploring Fable. Family First over here. As you read this, instead of trying to play with Fable for free, I will be with my entire family floating down a river, including my THREE brothers-in-law, all named JOE. I’m being for real (ok, Claire’s Joe isn’t technically a brother-in-law yet, but it’s looking promising). So please spend your time with the fam and I will keep you posted on upcoming issues on how to use this so you don’t burn through your piggy bank for nothing. 

What we are going to do first

I have not run this on real client work yet, so I cannot look you in the eye and say it saved us six hours on a project, because it simply has not had the chance to. But I asked Claude, based on everything it already knows about OUR business, where Fable would actually help us most, and here is what it told us to try first.

Number one, a full client SEO and AEO research pass, the whole thing, from the keyword research rounds all the way to the finished branded doc we hand the client. We already run that with Claude (and my supervision), it has a ton of steps, and apparently that is what this is built for. (PS: If you want me to create an SEO skill for you, let me know in the comments! I have been thinking about creating it but have been testing and re-testing to make sure it’s great!) 

Number two, finally building that concierge tool we keep talking about for our members (the one that interviews you about your business and hands back a personalized game plan). Building things is Fable's superpower, and it checks its own work as it goes, so it felt like a smart first real test.

Number three, our whole new-client setup in one go, the strategy doc, the recap email, the kickoff folder, all of it, instead of doing every piece one at a time the way we do now.

If you want to find out from Claude how YOU should be using or testing Fable, use this prompt. This one is just for figuring out WHERE to start (we saved the "is it worth it for THIS task" prompt for our AI CLUB members below).

You already know my business, my voice, my offers, and how I actually work. I want to start using Claude Fable 5, the most powerful (and most expensive) Claude model, which is built to run whole multi-step projects on its own instead of answering one question at a time.

Based on what you know about my business, tell me the ONE thing I should test it on first. Pick the task I do over and over, or quietly dread because it eats hours, that has real steps to it instead of being a quick ask, and that matters enough that a better result actually moves my business forward. Tell me in one sentence why that is the right first test for me, then give me a second and third option in case the first one does not fit my week.

Then write me a ready-to-run prompt for that first test, set up so Fable has everything it needs up front to nail it in one pass. If you need anything from me before I can run it, ask me now.

You Can Try This Too

If you are on a paid Claude plan and you are curious, here is the low-drama way to peek at Fable without any regret.

Open your Claude settings and find the Usage section, which shows you your limits and lets you turn usage credits on or off (and set a spending cap, which I would absolutely do before letting anything run wild on your card). Then pick ONE task, a piece of copy that really matters (maybe a sales page or sales email sequence), a research project you have been dreading, a workflow you run over and over, and hand THAT to Fable instead of a quick little question any model could answer. In other words, save the expensive tool for the expensive problem.

And when you land on a prompt that works beautifully, save it. Drop the whole thing into a doc, or better yet turn it into a reusable setup, so you are not paying premium prices down the road just to reinvent the same structure you already figured out once.

From Our Desk

The thing we keep circling back to (and the reason we build what we build) is that a model this powerful is still only as good as what it knows about YOU. You can hand Fable the most important sales page in your business and it will still read like a total stranger wrote it if it has no idea about your voice, your offers, your customer, or the way you actually talk.

That is the whole point of our AI Brand Brain, a set of files you load into Claude (or any LLM) one time so it stops spitting our generic AI Slop and starts sounding like you, using the same messaging strategy we run with our private clients. If you are going to spend limited Fable access (or real credits) on the copy that runs and markets your business, that is the piece that makes the output worth paying for. It comes to you free when you join AI CLUB, which is $5.55 a month, less than the fancy Starbucks your 9-year-old keeps begging for. (Or is that just me and my daughter who is 9 going on 24). I’m not a Starbucks drinker, so it is a SPECIAL treat to go. But if you are a “Starbies” drinker (that’s what the young kids call it), we made this AI membership so cheap you could join AND still buy your daily Starbies! 

We will report back the second we have gotten our hands properly dirty with Fable on real work. Until then, go enjoy your summer, because we are certainly trying to.

XO Krissy (+ Claire)

Paid subscribers, keep reading. This week's bonus is a copy-and-paste prompt that decides FOR you whether a task is even worth the expensive model, and tightens your request so you stop wasting usage figuring it out live. Not a member yet? Join AI CLUB for $5.55/month and your AI Brand Brain welcome gift is waiting.