What’s New in Claude Opus 4.7? Deep Dive into Features, Effort Levels, and Auto Mode

Overview

Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.7. Pricing remains $5 per million tokens, identical to Opus 4.6. The model is accessible through the Anthropic API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, and Microsoft Foundry.

Core Changes Compared to Opus 4.6

Programming ability : Marked improvement on long‑duration, complex software‑engineering tasks. The model now self‑verifies its output before returning results.

Vision capability : Image input support increased to a long side of 2,576 px (≈3.75 M pixels), more than three‑fold the previous limit, enabling richer computer‑use agents.

Instruction following : The model interprets prompts more literally; prompts tuned for 4.6 may need adjustment.

Memory : File‑system‑based long‑term memory is stronger across multi‑session workflows.

Real‑world knowledge work : Achieves state‑of‑the‑art results on Finance Agent and GDPval‑AA benchmarks (finance, law, and other high‑value domains).

Newly Added Features

Effort level xhigh : Introduced between high and max to give finer control over reasoning depth versus latency. All Claude Code plans default to xhigh.

Task budgets : Public testing enabled on the API, allowing per‑task token limits.

Claude Code /ultrareview : Dedicated review mode for bug and design‑defect marking (3 free runs for Pro/Max users).

Auto mode expansion : Available to Claude Code Max users; the model can make autonomous decisions with lower risk than fully skipping permission checks.

Caveats

Tokenizer change : The same input now consumes 1.0–1.35× more tokens, depending on content type.

Thinking cost : Higher effort levels increase thinking time and output token count, especially in later rounds of multi‑turn agent dialogs.

Safety profile : Honesty and prompt‑injection resistance improve, but mitigation for harmful advice around controlled substances is slightly weaker.

Relative positioning : Still weaker than the limited‑release Claude Mythos Preview, which remains a testbed for future security enhancements.

Effort Levels and Recommendations

The default effort for Opus 4.7 in Claude Code is xhigh. Recommended settings: low / medium: Use for cost‑sensitive, short, well‑defined tasks. high: Balanced intelligence and cost; suitable for concurrent sessions. xhigh (default, recommended): Ideal for most coding and agent tasks, offering strong autonomy without the token‑runaway risk of max. max: Reserve for extremely difficult problems where performance outweighs cost.

Effort levels can be changed mid‑task with the /effort command to control token usage and reasoning intensity.

Adaptive Thinking

Opus 4.7 replaces fixed thinking budgets with adaptive thinking, allowing the model to decide when to invest additional reasoning tokens. This reduces over‑thinking on simple queries while preserving depth for harder steps.

To encourage more thinking, prepend prompts such as:

Think carefully and step‑by‑step before responding; this problem is harder than it looks.

To reduce thinking, use prompts such as:

Prioritize responding quickly rather than thinking deeply. When in doubt, respond directly.

Behavioral Changes to Note

Response length now scales with task complexity: shorter answers for simple queries, longer for open‑ended analysis.

Tool‑calling frequency is lower, but each call involves deeper reasoning. Explicitly request tool usage when needed.

Fewer sub‑agents are generated by default. Request parallel sub‑agents only when the workflow benefits from them.

Best Practices for Using Opus 4.7 with Claude Code

Provide a clear, complete task description in the first round, including intent, constraints, acceptance criteria, and file locations.

Minimize the number of user‑interaction rounds to reduce token overhead.

Leverage auto mode for tasks that can run safely without frequent confirmations. Activate via Shift+Tab in the UI or the CLI shortcut.

Set up completion notifications (audio alerts or hook‑based callbacks) for long‑running jobs.

Auto Mode Usage

Auto mode routes permission requests to a model‑based classifier that automatically approves safe commands, eliminating the need for manual confirmation dialogs.

CLI shortcut : Press Shift+Tab to toggle auto mode.

Desktop/VSCode : Select auto mode from the dropdown menu.

Verification Strategies for Agent Workflows

Ensuring Claude can verify its own work is critical for reliable long‑running tasks. Typical verification methods include:

Backend development : Instruct Claude to start the server/service and run end‑to‑end (E2E) tests.

Frontend development : Use the Claude Chromium extension to let Claude control the browser for UI validation.

Desktop applications : Employ the Computer‑Use feature to interact with native UI elements.

Example combined skill command: Claude, execute task /go Which triggers:

End‑to‑end self‑testing via bash, browser, or Computer Use.

Code simplification/re‑structuring with /simplify.

Automatic pull‑request creation.

References

Opus 4.7 announcement: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-7

Auto mode details: https://claude.com/blog/auto-mode

Prompting guide: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/claude-prompting-best-practices

Context and session management: https://claude.com/blog/using-claude-code-session-management-and-1m-context