Did We Get a Secret Test of Opus 5.5?

Summary
In this episode of the Stacked Podcast, hosts Jack Roberts and Nick Saraev discuss rumors and early sightings of Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 model, theorizing whether pre-release testing was conducted quietly under Opus 5. They also examine the phenomenon of "shrinkflation" in frontier AI reasoning tokens and discuss an AI ethics controversy involving Stanford University's dining advertisements.

What is shown

• 00:39 – Review of an X post by @bridge4mind highlighting leaked Azure OpenAI configuration files mentioning gpt-6-sol, gpt-6-luna, and gpt-6-astra-minor, alongside speculation of Claude Opus 5.5 launching at half the price of Fable 5.1.
• 04:24 – Demonstration video posted by @devteamdrew showing Claude Opus creating an animated, interactive JavaScript infographic of the hydrological water cycle.
• 06:03 – Demonstration clip shared by @pradeepxkapoor of a web application created by Claude that converts images into 3D exploded vector graphics.
• 06:50 – Discussion of consumer "shrinkflation" illustrated with images of redesigned Toblerone chocolate bars and aerosol spray cans, comparing it to model token pruning.
• 12:15 – Article and social media posts regarding Stanford University altering a real photo of three students using AI, swapping one male student for a Black woman and modifying facial features.
• 18:07 – Browsing viewer comments on the Stacked Podcast YouTube Studio community dashboard.

Claims & numbers

• The presenters cite leaks suggesting Claude Opus 5.5 offers Claude Fable 5.1-level intelligence at half the price (referenced from posts noting Fable 5.1 runs for ~30 minutes on a $200 Max plan).
• Nick states that reasoning tokens generated by Claude Fable 5 were observed to have decreased by 55.9% over recent periods to reduce compute load.
• Jack cites an economic tax example in Scotland where raising top income tax rates from 45% to 48% was projected to generate £200 million but reportedly resulted in a net £160 million loss due to behavioral changes.
• The article reviewed reports Stanford University modified a dining ad photo taken by a university photographer, replacing student Ramirez with a Black woman and slimming the remaining students.

Notable quotes

• 01:23 – Jack Roberts: "Fable 5.1 level intelligence for half of the price. That's the headline advertisement for it."
• 08:40 – Nick Saraev: "That's why what I talked about on that reasoning thing yesterday, where, you know, Fable 5 reasoning tokens had gone down by 55.9%..."
• 12:17 – Jack Roberts: "Stanford University's dining ad used AI to edit a real photo of three students, removing Ramirez and replacing him with a Black woman while making the others thinner with tweaked facial features."

Assessment
This is an informal podcast review and commentary discussing unverified leaks, third-party user demonstrations on X, and contemporary AI controversies. The hosts do not run independent benchmarks or have official access to Opus 5.5 during the segment, instead speculating on external posts and community observations.

Described by gemini-3.8-flash on 2026-09-29 from the video's audio and frames.