I don't think we should trust 'small model beats giant frontier model' either... Don't get me wrong I think small models are and could be great, but matching something like fable 5?

I guess one point is you can run Qwen on a local machine.

It is not public knowledge how Fable 5 works - it is all hidden away behind a web service - for what it is worth it might a hybrid architecture with harness, loops, tools etc. combined with a traditional llm like what is done here.