alt Hacker NewsI'm struggling to understand why I'd ever use this instead of just using a lower effort level for opus given on many of the benchmarks listed the cost per task rises above opus at anything higher than medium effort.
Only thing I can think of is for when someone is out of opus credits. Of course there are API billing use cases but I'd probably still just use opus on low.
Replies
Looking at some of the agentic coding benchmarks on the system card[0], pages 117-118, it seems that running it at low outperforms Sonnet 4.6 at any level, and is a good deal cheaper as well. So on low it could be a good workhorse for an Opus-planned task.
Older Opus models will likely get deprecated and then over time this is the cheapest model. That is how prices are currently increased.
Maybe it's not for you? I don't pay, so I can't even use Opus... So this is an upgrade over Sonnet 4.6 for me.
Speed is a huge reason. Sometimes you just need some simple tasks get done fast, and waiting 30-60 seconds for opus to even start thinking can really slow things down.
More and more I find myself trying to stop Opus from doing something stupid, and at every turn I need to tell it to stop overcomplicating things.
I think the models are being optimized for wealth extraction from users and companies, instead of solving problems.
I don't know why Opus would try to create an entire library when I told it specifically to do something simple that would take 2-3 lines of Python.