Astra/Fable
Shares rank 54 of 72 language models by recommenders
Recommended for coding, design docs and analysis, with error rates some call at or below human level. Critics say it struggles with front-end UI and can produce costly bugs.
Recommended for coding, design docs and analysis, with error rates some call at or below human level. Critics say it struggles with front-end UI and can produce costly bugs.
13 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 69%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Low error rates, near human level
“In my recent experience, error rates for astra/fable are at or below human level.”
Comment from 13 Sep 2026 in “AI recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all” “error rates for astra/fable are at or below human level”
Comment from 13 Sep 2026 in “AI recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all” Handles coding tasks well
“What worked for me was to ask Astra/Fable to include pseudo code in the design doc.”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “How to write an effective software design document” “the agent (Fable/Astra) will immediately understand”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 in “First Principles Thinking” “ace any leetcode problem with zero difficulty”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: I couldn't afford interview prep, so I built a free alternative”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Weak at front-end UI work
“I can't get a frontier model to execute simple front-end UI tasks beyond the level of a visually impaired intern.”
Comment from 13 Sep 2026 in “David Sacks: OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need Regulations to Pace Frontier Models” “even the Fable/Astra or dedicated tools like Quilter, Flux, and others have a very, very long way to go”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards” Can be beaten by experts
“even the Fable/Astra or dedicated tools like Quilter, Flux, and others have a very, very long way to go”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards” “I can mop up Astra Fable etc even if I give them literal infinite time and all the subagents”
Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “Why I'm still bearish on LLMs after Navier-Stokes”
Other language models people recommend
The four most recommended other language models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus | 3,331 | 2,746 | 55% | 13 | 4 mo156 owners | — |
| OpenAI GPT | 1,205 | 987 | 55% | 13 | 6 mo47 owners | — |
| Claude Sonnet | 854 | 586 | 59% | 13 | 6 mo46 owners | — |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 828 | 223 | 79% | 8 | 1 mo24 owners | Approved |
| Astra/FableThis page | 9 | 4 | 69% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
All 13 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Hell I'd probably trust Fable/Astra right now and save myself the expense.”
“the agent (Fable/Astra) will immediately understand”
“because fable/astra is working for you?”
“It's a working pile of trash that has quadratic growth in the remote postgres database resulting in 10GB stored in a few days for what should have been like 5 MB of data.”
“I can mop up Astra Fable etc even if I give them literal infinite time and all the subagents”
“What worked for me was to ask Astra/Fable to include pseudo code in the design doc.”
“In my recent experience, error rates for astra/fable are at or below human level.”
“error rates for astra/fable are at or below human level”
“I can't get a frontier model to execute simple front-end UI tasks beyond the level of a visually impaired intern.”
“the SLA is literally just a middleman's 100k cut”
“ace any leetcode problem with zero difficulty”
“even the Fable/Astra or dedicated tools like Quilter, Flux, and others have a very, very long way to go”
“Fable & Astra would give far better initial legal analysis vs HN”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.