Claude Opus 5.5

Measured my own burn before changing plans: running the verify command as a second turn cost $0.96 a task against $0.39 plain on Opus 5.5, 125 s against 75 s.

I switched over to Sonnet 5.5 and it needs a bit more hand holding, but the usage rate is superior to Opus 5.5.

My workflow is now simple. I use my vibe coded app, create a bunch of issues on github, and when ready I run my skill /issues. This skill fetches all issues, groups them, and works on them all by priority, asks me when necessary. When done it automatically analyzes the session and adds helpful scripts and CLAUDE.md changes to be more efficient next time. It's awesome, I've never been more productive.

What’s with GPT 6.1 and Opus 5.5 both refusing to type passwords for smoke tests? I’ve got a local environment setup for my testing and staging environment, I explain to both Claude and GPT it’s all local and a staging environment and both models refuse to make up passwords for test accounts I want them to walk through and create. They both keep stopping and asking me to do it.

For example if you have Opus 5 process a bunch of reviews from an subagent fanout that is reviewing code, then synthesizing those into a final report. It keeps more of the actual defects vs 5.5, by a small margin. But it also keeps more false positive and takes about twice as long and twice as many tokens as 5.5

Everyone is praising Opus but it flags even simple html fixes, GLM never let me down! I was playing with Opus 5.5 asking to improve the marketing texts on our html pages, and suddenly it started to reject it

Opus 5.5 (O5.5) has been exceptional for me in Claude Code over the last six days. Architecture-first, DRY/SOLID coding out of the box, exceptional communication style, phenomenal token efficiency. I’ve been working with it basically nonstop, ~12 hours a day, since last Wednesday. But right around the time my monthly limit reset this evening, I noticed an extreme shift in communication style and coding behavior that feels suspiciously like Opus 5 (O5). For the last week, O5.5 would take my requirements and immediately get to work, usually knocking out a feature in minutes and doing an incredible job across implementation, UX, architecture, and token efficiency. Tonight, I’m seeing something very different.

Where O5.5 consistently respected DRY principles and the existing architecture, the modules created tonight are suddenly happy to reinvent every wheel that came before them. The difference in ability is not subtle. The other tell is token usage. O5.5 has been startlingly efficient compared with O5, which was an absolute token-eating monster. I’ve been getting substantially more feature work done with O5.5 at a fraction of the token usage. Tonight, simple tasks and relatively small features are suddenly devouring tokens at a pace that feels much more like O5. I’m especially sensitive to this because I have to request an increase in my spend limit every time I hit it. On O5, I was sending a request almost every day. On O5.5, I hadn’t needed to send a single one all week. Then tonight I jumped from roughly 70% to 90% usage in about an hour.

SOL 5.6 and 6.1 both are monsters for high level backend coding.

It started from one prompt I typed into Claude Code: "*using only pixels directly remake a beautiful pokemon red remake … absolute pixel art perfection.

* No image files at all. The game draws into a 320×180 screen pixel by pixel.