Have you actually used Opus 4.8 in Claude Code? It takes way too long to do any practical task on higher thinking levels due to over-engineering. And I am not the only one complaining. Lots of people downgrade to Opus 4.6 exactly for this reason.

Opus 4.8 training works well for agentic work. Not for code harness.

EDIT:

```

stronger on coding and raw capability but can be more argumentative, verbose, and costly.

Reliability and instruction-following Many users say 4.6 felt more reliable and followed instructions better. "With 4.6, when I tell it something, it actually remembers the spirit of what I asked for and keeps applying it."

Others report 4.8 drifts from preferences and can be frustrating to control. "I still find myself getting frustrated when it ignores preferences and drifts from instructions"

Some people find 4.7/4.8 push back more and act more adversarial than 4.6. "The biggest complaint against 4.8 is that it is argumentative and "pushes back" constantly"

Coding quality and capability Several users praise 4.8’s coding strength and thoroughness. "4.8 is technically impressive, especially for coding"

Other reports say 4.6 could be better for certain coding workflows and breaks less. "4.6 still >> 4.8 for anyone else as well? Maybe I'm in the minority, but for my use cases Opus 4.6 is still better than"

Some recommend mixing models: use 4.8 for key tasks and 4.6 for general work to save tokens. "What I do is... use 4.8 for key moments, and for everything else 4.6"

Cost, speed and token behavior Users note 4.8 often uses more tokens and can feel slower because it “thinks” more. "4.8 is much more cautious, and as a result - slower. It checks everything, thinks for a long time etc."

```

[https://www.reddit.com/answers/601770d4-4059-478d-aa52-b445c...]

Works extremely well for us. I never know what other people are doing when we read these stories.

Reddit is the absolute worst way to find real experience. Opus 4.8 is a very capable model and no chinese model can outdo it.