Tale Mode

Anthropic pulled the plug on Fable. Tale Mode was made by Fable to get Opus to act like Fable.

Not smarter — more disciplined. A drop-in plugin for Claude Code and OpenAI Codex that makes any Claude work like a careful senior engineer: verify the real code instead of trusting memory, put a source on every decision, run an independent adversarial review before it says "done," and keep durable notes. It also ships a self-armed autonomous loop that keeps working until a real check passes, and makes plan-mode investigation dialog-free (a fail-closed hook auto-approves provably read-only shell — plan mode only, so you approve the plan, not fifty grep prompts). Everything is right-sized, so a typo fix stays a typo fix.

The model got pulled; the method didn't.

Contents: Quick start · Problem · How it works · Examples · Use it · Autonomous loop · What's different · Install · Security & trust · Tuning · Does it work? · What's in the box · Managing / removing · Contributing

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Quick start

/plugin marketplace add alicicek/tale-mode
/plugin install tale-mode@tale-mode

Restart Claude Code (so it loads), then just ask:

tale mode — refactor the auth middleware and prove it still blocks expired tokens

That's it. It picks how much process the task deserves, plans, verifies against the real code, and tells you what it couldn't check. For bigger work, reach for the /tale-mode:plan-phase → /tale-mode:kickoff-phase pipeline. Requires Claude Code ≥ v2.1.154 (the deterministic kickoff auto-arm needs ≥ v2.1.195, where it was verified; on older builds the marker simply never fires and the loop degrades gracefully to agent-armed goals).

The problem it targets

Strong models, under time pressure, predictably cut the same corners:

• act before understanding; one-shot a multi-step task
• trust their own summary of a file instead of re-reading it (stale claims, wrong line numbers, invented APIs)
• agree too readily and inscribe constraints nobody asked for
• review their own work — and miss the framing error they're inside
• drift on long tasks; forget earlier decisions
• declare "done" from the diff without running anything
• either over-engineer trivia or take shortcuts on the hard part

Tale Mode is a checklist-as-skill that targets each of these.

How it works

Three layers, built on one observation: instructions can be ignored by a rushing model, but hooks can't. Words drift; hooks don't.

A · INSTRUCTIONS   the method the model reads      skill · phase commands · output style
B · ENFORCEMENT    deterministic bash hooks        session-start · phase marker · plan-mode read-only approve · the Stop-hook loop
C · REVIEW         eyes that aren't the author's   plan-reviewer agent · optional governor