It seems there are two distinct groups, one which is doing relatively well with Luna, Deepseek Flash and similar models while other seem to be satisfied only with the state of the art.
Having worked with both, it seems like a control thing to me. Either you're cool with Fable spitting out tons of code you'll never read, or you're cool with Luna doing targeted work while you manage the main work thread.
(I'm in the second boat so long as I'm responsible for the code I PR)
I'm ok with not-Fable until I need anything design-related: a nice HTML page, LaTeX typesetting, UI design. Sol is especially incapable of doing anything sensible.
Is there any alternative model with design sensibilities?
I'm happily in both depending on what it is. Even Sol / Fable cannot do some truly novel stuff and if you rely on it too heavily you get detached from the underlying systems to the point that it's both uncomfortable and detrimental.
Depends on how in-the-loop you want to be. I personally delegate all the writing of the code to agents, but I maintain a clear mental model of the architecture, which I come up with by iterating and prototyping with agents. I can use Luna for all of this, although I switch depending on the task. It's nice to be able to throw a 1,000 word rough spec at Fable and get a personal tool that works perfectly though. I expect that as the models get better, I'll continue to be in the loop, but operate at increasingly higher levels of abstraction.