Claude Opus 4.8 is here: effort controls, dynamic workflows, cheaper fast mode, better honesty, less deception
On Thursday, Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.8, the newest version of its flagship model. Key features include effort controls, allowing users to adjust how much cognitive effort the model expends on a task, enabling dynamic workflows that adapt to complexity. The update also introduces a cheaper fast mode, reducing costs for simpler queries, and boasts better honesty and less deception in outputs. This release builds on Anthropic's focus on safety and reliability, addressing concerns about model honesty. The pricing and availability details were not specified in the excerpt, but the model is expected to be available via Anthropic's API and consumer products. The New Stack reported the news, highlighting the effort controls as a significant advancement for developers seeking to balance performance and cost.
Developers can now optimize cost and performance by tuning Claude's effort per task.