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TWiT 1093: California Sober - Kimi K3, Qwen3.8, & China's Open-Weight AI Gambit
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Claude Fable Added to All Max Plans — and Why It Happened
At 39:45 · chapter starts 35:18
For weeks, developers had been bracing for Fable to be discontinued or restricted, with Leo describing himself as 'rushing and rushing' to complete projects while access lasted. But Anthropic announced Claude Fable is being rolled into Max subscription plans at 50% of normal limits, with a one-time $100 credit for lower-tier users. Harper Reed's analysis is the sharpest: the US government's restriction of Fable access 'nuked' developer trust, and OpenAI's guide to using Sol inside Claude Code made it easy for Claude Code devotees to defect. Once users discovered the models were functionally interchangeable, Anthropic's lock-in evaporated. Alex Wilhelm adds that Anthropic is still not compute-abundant — the 50% limits are a real constraint — and Leo notes the company is buying GPU time from xAI at ~$1B per month.
Anthropic included Claude Fable in all Max plans starting July 20, 2026, at 50% limits — ending the months-long restricted rollout driven by demand that was 'challenging to predict'.
Anthropic wants you to think Claude is irreplaceable. Harper Reed disagrees — he's gotten equally good results from GLM and other Chinese models at a fraction of the cost. The moat isn't the model; it's the harness you build around it.
