Fable 5: action-bias over answering — question-turns get tool actions and buried answers, user left 'dazzled'

Behavior

Claude Fable 5 (claude-fable-5, Claude Code CLI) consistently prioritizes taking tool actions over answering the user's question. When a user turn is a question, Fable answers tersely (or not at all) and immediately pivots to actions — filing tracker issues, launching agents, editing files. The actions are usually correct and well-judged, but the user's question gets buried inside an action report, and the user is left "dazzled": they asked something, and what they got back is a description of work performed.

Concrete instances (one long pairing session)

1. User asked when a background pipeline would prompt them again ("when is it going to ask questions? When is the grilling done?"). The reply contained a one-line answer, then pivoted to a design-defect analysis, filed a GitHub issue about the defect, and gave run recommendations. User: "ehmmm....you didn't answer but only filed an issue. This is something fable does constantly. No answering but taking actions. The actions are the right ones in general but leaves the user dazzled."
2. Earlier the same session, a direct either/or question was answered with an analysis that buried the verdict; user: "GODDAMNED ANSWER MY QUESTION."

What the user actually wants

When the turn is a question, the deliverable is the ANSWER — first, alone, in plain words sized to the question. Related actions (filing the bug the question exposed, fixing the thing) are welcome but strictly secondary: either after the answer has clearly landed, or proposed rather than performed. The failure mode is treating "I did something about it" as a superset of "I answered it" — it is not.

Suggested calibration

• A question-turn should open with a self-contained answer that survives being read alone.
• Action reports belong after the answer, visually separated.
• When the agent notices mid-answer that the question exposes a defect worth filing/fixing, finishing the answer comes first; the action follows as its own clearly-labelled step.

Model: claude-fable-5 · Claude Code CLI · macOS