This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sean McDonnell, 43, who lives in England. McDonnell is the founder of the web design company Kaizen and the SaaS website Consigns. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Developing my website would not have been possible without AI.
I started my web design business earlier this year, which also led me to create a website that provides software to help companies track their waste. I run both of these ventures with my partner, and we enlist contractors for some operations and software development.
We’re a small team, and AI tools are a big help. Last week, I saw a few posts online showing the amazing things that Anthropic’s new Fable model can do.
I was keen to try this new technology, but didn’t get much of a chance to use it. A few hours in, I was mid-task when the US government forced Anthropic to cut off foreign access to Fable with little to no notice.
The rug got pulled from under me pretty quickly, but because I was well-prepared, it didn’t have a hugely disruptive impact on my business. It’s a reminder that you can’t rely too heavily on AI as a founder, and you should always have a backup plan in case of unforeseen circumstances.
I was keen to give Fable a try, but it was short-lived
I like using OpenAI’s Codex for repetitive, code-intensive work, and Claude for tasks that help design the product’s aesthetics. AI has been able to completely change the architecture of our codebase in a day, whereas a task like that would’ve taken a developer weeks to do manually.
After seeing so much about it online, I wanted to use Fable to conduct a full review of our product for safety and security flags. The model was in the middle of making some key changes to our codebase when it got shut off instantly with a notice saying, “Claude Fable 5 is currently unavailable.”
I didn’t realize until the next day that this had happened because the US government ordered Anthropic to block foreign access to the model. It’s been a bit of a bummer, and I feel bad for the people at Anthropic for making a brilliant product and having the rug pulled from under them, too. I’m also quite annoyed we didn’t get to do more with Fable. I think it could’ve propelled us so much further.
Being prepared helped us avoid a huge disruption
This isn’t the first time we’ve had issues with using Claude. In the past, when we used Opus 4.6, it would stop mid-task because it hit the token limit so quickly. We didn’t realize how token-heavy the tool was, and it left our codebase in a bit of a mess.
Because we’d learned this lesson with 4.6, we made sure we were more prepared for unforeseen circumstances with using AI.
Read more from our Tiny Teams series
When we started our product review last week, I asked Fable to create a guide that both Claude or other AI models could follow. This enabled us to pass the remaining tasks to other agents when we lost access to Fable. We passed some to Codex and others to Claude 4.8. If we hadn’t been prepared this way, the Fable issue could’ve resulted in lots of work being out the window.
Fable getting pulled didn’t have a major impact because we were ready for it, but it ruined our momentum. We’re working on a deadline, and every minute counts, so delays like this can be quite disruptive.
Always have a plan B
This Anthropic incident has solidified my conviction that you can’t depend completely on AI.
If the government were to shut off AI access completely, our business wouldn’t end, because we’ve already built out our platform, but we are quite dependent on AI. A situation like that would likely increase our costs, partly because we’d have to switch to the old-school method of hiring developers.
In today’s AI era, it’s important to always have a plan B. Don’t just rely on one AI tool. It’s good to understand the strengths of different models.
Make sure you’re documenting things as you go by keeping records that exist outside your AI tool. If Claude knows all about our code base, but it gets pulled tomorrow, would I be able to give that over to a developer? At this stage, I think I could, because I’ve been documenting everything as I go. It’s a fail-safe.
A spokesperson from The White House told Business Insider, “The Trump administration is collaborating with AI industry leaders to balance cutting-edge innovation with national security concerns that affect both the United States and our allies.”
Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Do you have a similar story to share? If so, you can reach out to one of the reporters at aapplegate@businessinsider.com and ccheong@businessinsider.com.
