Signal Over Noise Vol 2, Issue 26 | Jul 03 2026 Tales from the Workbench
Jim Christian
Retained excerpt
Signal Over Noise Vol 2, Issue 26 | Jul 03 2026 Tales from the Workbench Don’t have time to read this week’s issue? Why not copy/paste it into your AI agent and ask it for insights? Some weeks the newsletter is one idea worked all the way through when time affords it. This week it’s the other kind: a run of small tools, each one built to kill a single specific annoyance while I’ve been juggling my workload around being Dad Taxi. It’s been a week of non-stop interruptions and sweltering heat, but here’s what’s come from the workbench: New models on the block Two new models out from Anthropic: Sonnet 5 and Fable 5 (technically re-released — or can we say ‘out on good behaviour’?). I’m leaving both where they are for now. I gave Sonnet 5 a job running my morning-brief skill this week, which normally takes 5–10 minutes tops on Opus 4.8 — and it took a good deal longer. In fairness, my whole setup is tuned around Opus, so that’s the reminder that past a point the model isn’t the…
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