Claude Opus 5 review: this model is brilliant (but annoying)

I’m tired of new models. Every week there’s a new benchmark, a new frontier intelligence claim, a new thing to test. But here we are, because Opus 5 just dropped and I’ve had real hands-on time with it, so you’re getting the honest version.

This is my full Opus 5 review: personality analysis, live benchmark results from my 7-model How I AI eval, and an actual verdict on whether I’m swapping it in. Spoiler: the answer surprised me.

What you’ll learn:
• Why I think we’ve hit an intelligence overhang and what that means for which model variables actually matter now
• How Opus 5’s “neurotic” personality showed up in real coding sessions, including a merge conflict it refused to touch
• What I learned from asking both Opus 5 and GPT‑5.6 Sol “who’s smarter, you or me?”
• Where Opus 5, GPT‑5.6 Sol, Sonnet 5, and Gemini 3.1 Pro actually landed on the HIA benchmark leaderboard
• The one use case where Opus 5 earned straight 5s from me
• My actual plan for using Opus 5 going forward
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In this episode, I cover:
(00:00) Opus 5 is here
(03:15) First impressions
(06:12) Opus 5 vs. GPT‑5.6 Sol personality comparison
(14:39) Claude Slop: the verbosity problem and why it makes my blood boil
(16:55) How the How I AI benchmark works (7 models, 6 tasks, blind scoring)
(18:30) Live benchmark results: the leaderboard reveal
(23:25) My verdict and how I’ll actually use Opus 5
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Tools referenced:
• Claude Opus 5:
• Anthropic blog: anthropic.com/news
• GPT‑5.6 Sol: openai.com/index/previewing-gpt-5-6-sol
• Sonnet 5: anthropic.com/news/claude-sonnet-5
• Gemini 3.1 Pro: deepmind.google/models/gemini/pro
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Where to find Claire Vo:
ChatPRD: chatprd.ai
Website: clairevo.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/clairevo
X: x.com/clairevo
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