CHOP FIRST, my free browser racing game where you race a mountain sprint and send the link to friends to chop your time, just got its biggest update yet. Version 1.6 adds three full time-of-day environments, a live gap timer, medal tiers, braking boards, and named ghost replays. Here’s what’s new, and a bit about how it came together.

Quick recap if you missed the launch: CHOP FIRST is a three-lap mountain sprint built with Next.js and React Three Fiber. Every car, track, and piece of scenery is procedural Three.js geometry, every sound is synthesized with WebAudio, and the whole thing went live on June 11 after Anthropic’s Fable 5 model helped me clear weeks of stuck physics work in a single prompt. Fable 5 didn’t stay available for long, it got pulled days later after a US government export control directive, but it had already done its job getting CHOP FIRST out the door. I finished this update with Opus 4.8 once Fable 5 disappeared, more on that below.

What’s New in v1.6

Day, Dusk, and Night driving modes. This is the headline feature. Before you start a run, you pick your time of day. Daytime is bright and clean. Dusk gives you that golden, low-angle light across the mountain. Night flips on real headlights that pool across the asphalt as you drive, glowing tail lights ahead of you, and a sky full of stars over the peaks. Same track, same three laps, but it genuinely changes how the race feels. Night especially, the headlights change how you read corners because you can only see as far as the beams reach.

A live gap timer. While you’re racing, you now get constant feedback on your pace against your best time, ticking green when you’re ahead and red when you’re behind. It sounds small, but it changes the entire feel of the game. Every corner becomes “am I up or down right now,” and that’s the loop that makes you want to go again immediately.

Medal tiers. Bronze, Silver, and Gold time thresholds for each run, so there’s a goal beyond just beating your personal best. Cross the line and you immediately know how close you are to the next tier.

Named ghosts. When you race someone’s challenge link, you’re already racing a translucent replay of their actual run. Now that ghost is tagged with their name, so when you’re chasing someone down on the final straight, you know exactly who you’re trying to chop.

How It Came Together

A good chunk of this update, especially the Day/Dusk/Night lighting work, came together the same way the original physics fixes did: a detailed conversation with Claude on the things I needed built, and then a handoff brief and a single well-structured prompt to Fable 5, Anthropic’s short-lived Mythos-class model. It returned most of the lighting and environment work close to finished, the kind of progress that would normally take me days of back and forth.

Then, on June 12, Fable 5 was gone. The US government had issued an export control directive ordering Anthropic to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, and Anthropic disabled both models for every customer to comply. Mid-update, with no warning. I didn’t want to stall, so I switched to Opus 4.8, my next best option, to finish the remaining pieces and tidy up rough edges. Worth a mention since it’s part of how this update actually got built, not just a footnote.

Try v1.6

CHOP FIRST v1.6 is live and free at chop-first.vercel.app. Pick your time of day, set a blistering lap, and send the link to someone you know can’t resist a challenge. It’s still in beta, and the in-game feedback button goes straight to me, so if something’s broken or you’ve got an idea for what’s next, that’s the fastest way to reach me.

For what’s next: my actual daily driver for vibe coding is Sonnet 4.6, which is what I’m back on for the next round of changes. Whether Fable 5 makes a comeback or not, that’s the workflow CHOP FIRST runs on.

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FAQ

What’s new in the CHOP FIRST v1.6 update?
Version 1.6 adds three time-of-day driving modes (Day, Dusk, and Night, each with different lighting and visuals), a live gap timer during races, Bronze/Silver/Gold medal tiers based on finish time, braking boards before each corner, and named ghost replays when racing a challenge link.

Is CHOP FIRST free to play?
Yes. It’s live at chop-first.vercel.app and runs entirely in the browser on desktop or phone, no download or account required.

What happened to Fable 5, the AI model used to build CHOP FIRST?
On June 12, 2026, the US government issued an export control directive ordering Anthropic to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all users, citing national security concerns. Reporting has suggested the block may be temporary, though no restoration timeline has been announced. AnthropicInfoQ

How do the 24-hour challenges work?
After a three-lap run, your time gets recorded and you can share a unique link. Whoever you send it to has 24 hours to beat your time, or “chop” it, racing against a ghost replay of your actual run before the link expires.