SemiAnalysis discusses token efficiency gap between Astra and Fable
The guest describes OpenAI's side as short-term token efficiency: Astra finishes tasks faster but skips follow-ups, and over time Anthropic models produce more readable codebases.
The fastest finish is not always the most efficient one. “From personal experience trying out different models, you can definitely see token efficiency on the OpenAI side. But it’s what I like to think of as short-term token efficiency.” “Yes, I’ll get this immediate task done, but there are so many follow-ups that Fable would have just done, and Astra might have just not done for the sake of completing the task faster.” “In the long term, I feel like the Anthropic models build you the better codebase, and definitely a more readable one. If you read some of these Astra tests, it’s something else.” “I think models matter quite a bit for token efficiency, over which user is actually using them.”