October 2026 AI partnership update: Fable, Opus, GPT-6 Astra and Grok
Yes, my AI bill was larger than normal this month.
The point of the blog post is for me to explain what I’m doing with all of the different AIs that are available right now. Here’s the update.
My primary driver is Fable 5.1 because it’s still the most intelligent thinking and strategy partner.
I’ve been using Opus 5.5 a lot since its release because it’s still a phenomenal designer. It’s very fast. It’s not quite as intelligent as Fable 5.1 in terms of general intelligence and thinking, but it can do just about everything if you don’t need a thinking partner for real-world strategy work.
I experimented with GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol, and nothing really stood out with those models because there was nothing that was better than what Claude has to offer.
I found that Fable 5.1 was still better than GPT-6 Astra for thinking. Not only that, there were a few times where GPT-6 Astra would just stop working for no reason and had to be manually reminded. There were also a bunch of things that it just would not actually execute on, whereas Fable never had an issue executing on really anything.
Still, as of today, right now, there’s no reason for me to switch over to OpenAI as a main driver. Right now, the ultimate setup for me is:
- Claude as the main driver
- Grok 4.7 as the backup
Grok has a very similar feature set to ChatGPT when you look at Grok Bot and ChatGPT dots, but I prefer the simplicity of Grok Bot and the trustworthiness, more generally speaking, of Grok versus the Codex agents.
Grok 4.6 and 4.7 are both excellent models. The only reason that I’m not using them is because Fable 5.1 is still the best, and Opus 5.5 is better than Grok 4.7 for most things now, especially design.
Saying that, I do love using Grok Bot on all of my devices, and what I love about Grok Bot is that it is trouble-free. Computer use and its simplicity are the things that really stand out. I like to use Grok Bot voice to control Fable 5.1 sessions using tmux and using my business agent operating system setup.
Grok, by far, if Claude isn’t available, is my next most highly recommended main driver.