Claude Opus 4.8 is here. Is it as good as they say?
I got a few hours of early-access testing with Anthropic’s newly released model Opus 4.8. I walk through real coding, design, and strategy tasks across Claude Code and Claude Cowork, and give you my unfiltered view on what impressed me and what didn’t.
Where Opus 4.8 excels: greenfield prototypes, one-shot features, and fast execution
Where it struggles: the last 10%, edge cases in existing codebases, and hallucinations
How Opus 4.8 compares to Opus 4.7 on business strategy work
Why I’m still reaching for Opus 4.7 on data-heavy strategy and roadmap work
The new features shipping alongside the model: dynamic workflows with parallel subagents and effort control in Claude.ai and Cowork
The prompting and harness strategy I’d use to get the most out of it
(00:00) Introduction to Opus 4.8
(00:44) Benchmark performance and pricing
(01:53) First coding test: Building a prototyping tool
(03:00) Where it failed: The last 10% problem
(03:27) The hallucination problem
(04:23) Testing Opus 4.8 on existing codebases
(05:24) The ambition test: Building games for a 9-year-old
(07:03) Business strategy test: 4.7 vs 4.8
(08:23) The roadmap test
(09:17) Final verdict
• System Card: Claude Opus 4.8: https://cdn.sanity.io/files/4zrzovbb/website/c886650a2e96fc0925c805a1a7ca77314ccbf4a6.pdf
• Introducing Claude Opus 4.8 on X:
Claude@claudeai
Introducing Claude Opus 4.8: it builds on Opus 4.7 with sharper judgment, more honesty about its own progress, and the ability to work independently for longer than its predecessors. Available today at the same price.
4:57 PM · May 28, 2026 · 4.84M Views
2.33K Replies · 4.84K Reposts · 42.4K Likes
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