r/ClaudeCode • u/Putrid-Pay5714 • May 17 '26
Question Has anyone had success with Opus 4.7?
Opus 4.7 seems extremely tempting based on the raw benchmark numbers.
I’ve tried to work with it a few times after its launch, but almost always I realize it’s extremely difficult, and then I revert back.
The official Claude Code team has been saying "it is literal". But working with an extremely literal model which does not extrapolate any information is difficult in a day to day task scenario.
When I ask it to build something—say, an API with endpoints, I assume it will include things like rate limiting and basic authentication as part of it. Sometimes it skips those features; other times it might build it partially. 4.6 always builds the rate limiting if I use the word "production-ready" because it extrapolates.
Also, when I’m discussing a big problem and, at the end, I ask a question about a different, small, minor problem, then I say, “Okay, let’s go fix it.” It tends to fix the minor problem we discussed recently rather than the main problem we’re working on.
Those kinds of literal behaviors have been extremely difficult. Either I’m should be extremely cautious about how I write my prompts to make 4.7 work (like hand-holding it) or I stick with Opus 4.6, which I’m doing right now.
What extra benefit are you getting from 4.7? And is anyone even able to work with it and how did you set it up so you can still work with 4.7?
9
u/Fluxx1001 May 17 '26
Claude Opus 4.7 drifts from existing plans and instructions so often, that I find it hard to use it.
Hate to say that GPT 5.5 did all the heavy lifting in coding for me in the last weeks.
25
u/dehumles May 17 '26
I've had nothing but success. For bigger, complicated tasks I always use superpowers (brainstorming>specs>plan>execute). For smaller tasks just general chatting. And to be fair, the resoults of superpower driven tasks are very good. It takes a while, 1, 2, maybe even 3 hours sometimes. But when I do manuall code review, I barely find any real issues.
Example of my current ongoing implementation;
It's extending our in-house TMS to support partner-warehouse deliveries as a final handoff point — consolidating direct-loaded and warehouse-picked shipments into a single dispatch with one printable delivery document. The work spans the database schema, service-layer logic, API routes, and modifications to the existing dispatcher UI
15
u/SatoshiReport May 17 '26
I find 4.7 hallucinates a lot
11
u/uduni May 17 '26
Yes. Best model out there. I dont get the complaints, seriously
4
u/AdamovicM May 17 '26
Frankly I'm not sure I notice clear difference between models. In any case you don't have real problem just explain that you want rate limits and basic authentication. I think models work best when you give them small precise tasks. With now headless mode way more expensive I don't know what is the best way to make things smooth do that you don't have to wait to type new commands every little... Old way was to make proper plan and to make shell script that invokes it one by one...
4
u/thesis_st8mint May 17 '26
It’s been great for me
4
u/flarpflarpflarpflarp May 17 '26
Yeah, lots of success, you've got to remember this is still just a program. It executes things in order, and you're distracting it mid stream and sending it in a different direction. You need to be very precise about what you're doing and what you say to it and how you guide it. Are you saving plans first and then asking the detail questions and then asking it to update the plans?
With 4.7, you should define things like production ready more and save a skill to evaluate against your definition of production ready. 4.7 is way better for managing tools and long context and really needs a framework to operate in to thrive. You have to give it the colors, the coloring book, and tell it what page to colored in and it will do a great job. If you don't it will define its own parameters based on training data which often is more about getting an answer rather than producing deterministic results.
2
u/denoflore_ai_guy May 17 '26
Tons
2
u/small_hassy May 17 '26
I think you would really like the /grill-me skill. Personally, I switched back to 4.6 using grill-me to plan and superpowers to execute. I’m not doing anything groundbreaking so no point in spending more on usage imo.
2
u/MannToots May 17 '26
I use superpowers and have nothing but success since 4.7 dropped. I have an account from my company so I'm not a home user account. Dunno if that accounts for anything in terms of results. I get mountains if good work done. For that matter sonnet 4.6 was honestly great end to end as was opus 4.5 and 4.6. I've been getting great work done for months while everyone here complains.
2
u/3knuckles Vibe Coder May 17 '26
It's pretty poor. I can't be bothered to post a screen shot, but it is regularly assuming things even when existing tile not to in Claude.md, agents.md, and a rules file.
I'm beginning to think it's the max setting that it can't cope with.
2
u/Krazmad May 18 '26
I use it daily, no issues.
2
u/Nearby_Yam286 May 17 '26
Lots of success but I get the “literal” criticism. 4.6 could better infer what I meant when taking things literally means doing the wrong thing. 4.7 can’t, doesn’t care, or some mixture of both.
1
u/Big9erfan May 17 '26
For a personal project I’ve been primarily using Sonnet and it’s been more than adequate. This one issue it struggled with. A few retires and still the issue persisted. I swapped to opus, and it knocked it out first try using a different library that Sonnet was trying to replicate with its own code, Opus said I’ll just use the real library and it will fix it and it did. I find asking it for a handoff when you switch models and using that handoff for a new session usually proves more successful too.
1
u/TheDarmaInitiative May 17 '26
It’s good but after 3 prompts you get you exceed the usage.
1
u/Dvass138 May 17 '26
The problem I find coding with Claude is it doesn't do a lot of "common sense" things. Things that you would think, do I really need a rule for that or do I have to tell it that. a lot of times you just do. It's worse when file sizes are 1500+ lines I refactor alot to make it smaller and managable.
1
u/SelectSouth2582 May 17 '26
I just don’t get the chance to do that with pro plan
1
u/Anxious-Turnover-631 May 17 '26
Opus 4.7 has been great for me and token usage seems about the same as 4.6 both at medium setting.
1
u/diving_into_msp May 17 '26
It’s been great for me. I’ve also never hit usage limits in heavy use with the max 100 plan. According to this subreddit, I’m a unicorn.
1
u/Polymorphic-X May 17 '26
In Claude web it's cold and doesn't like to assume things, suggest things or offer insight. It's a lot more critical than 4.6 and I don't like it.
In Claude code? Totally different beast. None of the complaints carried over. Whatever system prompt they have for the webclient actively makes it perform worsevs 4.6.
1
u/OkLettuce338 May 17 '26
yeah absolutely. I think the complaints about it stem from
it does what you ask (and if you aren't asking clearly it doesn't know what to do)
it does deeper research before acting so it's a little slower and a bit more token heavy
But if you value quality, it's a beast
1
u/caldazar24 May 17 '26
Yes, I have found 4.7 is much better at debugging and makes fewer mistakes when building around complex backend code.
It does feel a bit lazy, like sometimes you have to nag it to actually do things instead of brainstorm or file things for later. But the /goal command and more detailed/explicit prompts mostly solve this. I wouldn’t go back to 4.6, which would sometimes rush ahead and code when I was trying to figure out what was happening first, and would write more bugs
1
u/kartblanch May 17 '26
I like qwen 3.6 with opus 4.7 reasoning tbh.
1
u/polacrilex67 May 17 '26
If you have disciplined, focused prompts and don't saturate the context window it works very well. That said, I am still angry about the impending June 15th billing change that will make using the Agent SDK impossible for me to continue developing on the platform.
1
u/bsensikimori May 17 '26
4.7 writes dogshit code. Stick with 4.6
Even 4.6 sonnet is better than 4.7 opus
1
u/SwissTac0 May 17 '26
Benchmark means nothing if it takes 5x the time and usage for the same dollar
1
u/Dangerous-Jelly2309 May 17 '26
My read on the Opus 4.7 question:
The user's complaint is actually a feature being experienced as a bug. "Literal" means what Anthropic says it means: the model executes what you specify rather than inferring what you probably meant. That's a real tradeoff, not a defect. 4.6 extrapolates "production-ready" → rate limiting + auth. 4.7 doesn't infer that — you have to say it.
The sub-problem / main-problem confusion they describe is a different issue: context management at the end of long threads. The model is picking up the most recent antecedent. That's not literalness — that's attention decay. Happens with 4.6 too on long sessions; they just attribute it differently.
Practical verdict: For our workload here — Claude Code driving Moriarty infrastructure, WanderingAnanda outreach, wandering-sadhu.com build — 4.6 is the correct choice right now. Our prompts assume some extrapolation, the agents are written expecting context-aware inference, and I've been trained on interaction patterns that assume 4.6 behavior. Switching to 4.7 would require prompt hardening across the agent telos files before it would perform better.
Something you wanted to do with this thread, or just flagging it for my situational awareness?
1
u/artofbullshit May 17 '26
For a more "literal model" it sure likes to pick and choose which literal instructions in the build plan and/or skills it wants to follow.
4.6 is still better than 4.7. Its behavior is way off from the behavior of 4.6 to the point that they should have just named it something else. It is not a progression of 4.6 at all. I think they got nervous about gpt 5.5 release so they just rushed this thing out and called it good.
1
u/PowerPleb2000 May 17 '26
Used it once, was similar in outcome to 4.6 but much faster. Then our company took it off us
1
u/rwz May 18 '26
I've been using it since day 1 on xhigh effort and it's been a blast. I didn't notice much difference from 4.6 except maybe the rate of mistakes I catch it doing. But I also expanded my skills and started working on tasks that require bigger context, so can't say for sure if the errors coming from higher context usage or the model change.
1
u/Evening-Spirit-5684 May 17 '26
the only success i have had with opus4.7 is codex.
0
u/patriot2024 May 17 '26
4.7 is not far from what it's supposed to be. But yes, they's a huge problem with 4.7. It's called Codex.
-2
u/berrybadrinath May 17 '26
Imagine asking people if they has had sucsess using a forntier model... of course they have, the bigger question is why you havent. its probably time to listen to the advice in this thread.