Fable 5 with a sidekick costs less than Opus 4.8 on FrontierCode

Cognition found that Fable 5 led runs cost less than Opus 4.8 led runs on FrontierCode 1.1 when both used the same sidekick, $1.86 versus $2.04 per run. Fable 5 scored 60.7 against 54.6 for Opus 4.8 in those configurations, and it took fewer lead turns, delegated earlier, and rarely edited code itself. The post attributes the difference to delegation style rather than per-token price, and notes that the approach gives little benefit on short or serial debugging tasks.