If you’ve used these models heavily for coding:

• How does Opus 4.5 feel vs 4.1 for you?
• Are you also bouncing between Opus, Sonnet, Gemini, etc.?
• What combo is working best for your day-to-day dev work?

Curious to hear other stacks.

10/10

Is Opus 4.5 bad? No.

Is it Opus 4.1’s replacement for deep coding work? No.

It feels like I:
• Lost my genius architect (4.1)
• Got an excellent foreman (4.5)
• Plus great subcontractors (Gemini, Codex)

Useful, but not the same flow as before.

9/10

The current stack I'd suggest:

• Gemini 3 Pro → One-shot assets, SVGs, small libs, single HTML files
• Opus 4.5 → big-feature planning and refactors (but you need to guide it more than 4.1)
• ChatGPT (Codex) → code review, catching subtle issues the others miss

8/10

My take on Gemini 3 Pro:

• Great for one-off tasks
• Can one-shot big greenfield challenges

But it doesn’t have the same deep exploratory vibe 4.1 had. For me it’s weaker at slow, incremental refactors and better at one-offs.

7/10

So... I’ve lost my very smart planning partner (Opus 4.1) but gained a stronger Sonnet in Opus 4.5. That leaves me wondering:

• Which AI do I use for in-depth planning?
• Do I lean hard on Gemini 3 Pro?
• Or juggle multiple models as a combined “brain”?

6/10

From actually coding with it, Opus 4.5 feels dumber than 4.1. Not bad, just shallow:

• Digs less into tricky code
• Gives up faster on hard bugs
• Feels more like Sonnet 4.5 Plus than a true Opus successor

If I could, I’d prefer to run 4.1.

5/10

Pricing backs this up:

• Opus 4.1: $75/MTok out
• Opus 4.5: $25/MTok out

A 3x price gap even after 4.5 ships???

This suggests 4.1 is way more expensive to run. Is it worth the 3x price tag? No. But for in-depth planning and refactors, I’d put it 50% ahead of Opus 4.5.

4/10

Why I think Opus 4.1 was unprofitable:

• Severe Opus 4.1 caps got implemented soon after launch
• They started pushing Sonnet 4.5 hard
• Opus 4.5 (released yesterday) feels like a weaker, cheaper-to-run Opus

My theory: 4.1 blew a hole in margins; 4.5 is the "sustainable" Opus.

3/10

I think Anthropic saw Opus 4.1 as their last big swing at mainstream devs before others caught up. They pushed it until it became too expensive to run.

My gut: it may have cost 4–5x more to serve than they charged. Pure speculation, but I think it fits. 👇

2/10

Mostly vanilla HTML with tailwind and vanilla JavaScript. But I'm also comfortable with React/Vue.

I start with Figma if the design is complex.

Send the UI idea to me, I will build it for you