This guess/explanation predicts that most users won't match what the initial social media hype claims, doesn't discount user experience as simple habituation nor does it assume companies are lying when they say there have been no changes to the model itself (quantization included).
I also think there's an aspect where initial testing is more forgiving because the more persnickety polish bits can be ignored and tests are likely to have similar structure to things that can be trained for. Meanwhile, actual specific work items are a broader unusual distribution with more stringent acceptance criteria.
Personally, I can detect a separation between Sol and Astra (but not as large as that between Opus and Fable). While they can solve most of the same problems, Astra takes less time, is less frustrating to talk to, is cleaner, notices more, spins wheels less and requires less corrections.
IMO this is 90% of it (as someone who has a bit of a different interaction style and runs these things less autonomously, and hasn't generally seen the claimed regressions). Day 1: throw new stuff at it that failed badly, exciting to see something make more progress! Day n: reality sets in that it still wasn't perfect the first time.
So it may be a widespread hallucination. But there's no evidence of that either.
If they have a "hey we're being benchmarked" mode, which is not hard to imagine, avoiding tripping it is going to be annoying and difficult to prove.
> "Demand for Astra is really unprecedented. We're pulling all the levers possible to sustain the demand, but I've not seen anything like it until now and we went through very steep growth before. Priority will always be to keep excellent service for existing users, but we might have to pause new Pro subscriptions for a bit if this continues."