Kent Tech: June 2026 Recap

Another month, another Thursday evening at the Muggleton Inn in Maidstone!

Kent Tech, June 2026: another month of pints and shop talk at the Muggleton Inn in Maidstone.

The table stayed busy and the topics ran well past the usual close. Here's what came up:

Fable 5 and Mythos getting banned

Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 got suspended worldwide after a US export control directive landed, tied to a reported jailbreak around cybersecurity capability. The group talked through what that means for anyone building on frontier models when access can disappear overnight regardless of how the rollout was planned.

Manual code vs vibecoding

Where the line actually sits between writing code by hand and leaning on AI to generate it. Not everyone in the room agreed on where that line should be, which made for the better discussion.

3D printing with AI in the loop

AI assisted design is starting to show up in 3D printing workflows. Less about replacing the process, more about speeding up iteration.

AI integrated workflows

What people are actually plugging AI into day to day, beyond the demo stage.

Price hikes and the case for local LLMs

With AI subscription and API costs climbing, running models locally got a proper airing. LM Studio and Open Code both came up as tools worth testing if you want more of the stack on your own machine.

GLM 5.2 vs Opus 4.8 and Fable 5

The consensus was GLM 5.2 holds up well enough as a stand in for now, running at roughly a third of the cost of Opus 4.8. The catch is that gap won't last; cheaper and faster models are coming, and if Fable 5 or Mythos return, they outclass GLM by a wide margin on capability. For the moment it's a solid budget option rather than a long term answer.

Next one's the 23rd of July, 7:00pm, same spot. If you're in Kent and want to talk shop, join Kent Tech and you'll know where to find us!