Developer Suspects Opus 5.5 Reasoning Traces Are Fake, Meant to Thwart Distillation

A developer claims to be 95% sure that Opus 5.5's reasoning traces read like a poorly quantized open-source model yet always yield correct answers, suspecting Anthropic fakes them to thwart distillation. Another developer notes finer-grained traces can be seen via the agent API.

2026-11-06 ~ 2026-11-07 · 3 related posts

• theo suspects Opus 5.5's reasoning traces are decoys designed to break distillation — theo · 2026-11-06
• Agent API (with $200/mo free credit) reveals finer-grained Opus reasoning traces — gandamu_ml · 2026-11-07
• Dev Suspects Opus 5.5 Reasoning Traces Read Like a Quantized Model Yet Nail the Answers — gandamu_ml · 2026-11-07