> I find it weird there's not more discussion here on HN on how the most used model now has clearly degraded in quality and it seems we've hit a peak and are on a downslope

It's not weird, because it's an anecdote, not an accepted fact.

Personally I've not been too happy with Opus 5, but I've had similar experiences with other models previously, feeling like they didn't quite fit with my working style.

So nothing indicates we've hit a peak.

I'll say everything indicates we've hit or are near peak for the masses at least (unless you start paying 50x more) but to each his own.

4.6 was best for us and right now yeah OpenAI and others are edging forward, but slower while prices are increasing industry wide as much as 20x, time to completion is increasing wildly and i'm sure they'll do the same over at OpenAI as their compute constraints also start to take a toll ie degrade performance.

In my view 4.6 era was way faster and with less weirdness so we've gone downwards at least in my company, 4.7 was ridiculous, then 4.8 was almost 4.6 level, 5 is even worse than 4.7 - so it's not a bit up and down its down then a little up then further down.

And all of this is against a backdrop of zero ROI in this sector - so it makes sense we've hit a peak and we're now seeing the subsidisation phase begin to falter, will there be better models certainly but only for short amounts before they get quantised (or whatever is happening behind the scenes), and with diminishing returns over huge prices increases and slower responses.