Anthropic launches Claude Opus 4.8 with stronger agentic coding, user-controlled effort, and cheaper fast mode

Anthropic introduced Claude Opus 4.8, an upgraded version of its flagship model with benchmark gains in coding, reasoning, agentic tasks, and knowledge work at the same base price. The release adds user-controlled effort on claude.ai, dynamic workflows in Claude Code for large-scale tasks, and a fast mode that runs 2.5x faster and is now three times cheaper than before.

The launch shows AI labs shifting from raw model quality toward more controllable and cost-efficient agentic workflows. Cheaper fast inference and better tool use could make advanced models more practical for software development, research, and enterprise automation.

Claude Opus 4.8