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anthropic/opus-4-8-coding (Opus-Tier Advanced Coding)

examples/anthropic/opus-4-8-coding/README.md

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anthropic/opus-4-8-coding (Opus-Tier Advanced Coding)

This example exercises the Opus-tier Claude models on hard coding tasks, comparing Claude Opus 5 against Claude Opus 4.8 at xhigh effort — plus Opus 5 at low so you can see the effort tradeoff on your own tasks.

You can run this example with:

bash
npx promptfoo@latest init --example anthropic/opus-4-8-coding
cd opus-4-8-coding

What This Tests

Opus 5 is the current Opus-tier model, at the same $5/$25 pricing as Opus 4.8 — so this is a like-for-like capability comparison rather than a cost one. This example evaluates:

  • Bug diagnosis across multiple system boundaries
  • Production-quality code generation with proper error handling
  • Code review with nuanced, prioritized feedback

Working with Opus 5

  • Thinking is on by default. This is the key difference from Opus 4.8: an omitted thinking block runs adaptive thinking rather than none. Since max_tokens caps thinking plus the answer, give it headroom — promptfoo's default rises to 2048 on this model, but set it explicitly for real work. On the bug-diagnosis task in this example, Opus 5 at xhigh spent ~4.4k tokens thinking; an 8k budget truncated the answer mid-sentence, which is why this config uses 16k.
  • Disabling thinking is effort-gated. thinking: { type: disabled } is only accepted at effort high or below; pairing it with xhigh or max returns a 400. Promptfoo drops the rejected disabled (keeping your effort) and warns once.
  • effort is the main cost lever. Opus 5 supports low through max. Start at xhigh for coding and agentic work, then sweep downward — low and medium are unusually strong here, which is why this example runs both.
  • Sampling controls are managed for you. Opus 5 rejects temperature, top_p, and top_k at the model level; promptfoo omits them automatically (don't set them in config).

Working with Opus 4.8

  • Builds on Opus 4.7. Opus 4.8 supports the same feature set as 4.7 (no breaking API changes) and improves capability on complex reasoning and long-horizon agentic coding.
  • Adaptive thinking is opt-in. Unlike Opus 5, without an explicit thinking block Opus 4.8 runs without extended thinking, even at high effort — so this example sets thinking: { type: adaptive } on the 4.8 provider.
  • effort defaults to high; xhigh is available. Setting effort: high behaves the same as omitting it. Start with xhigh for coding and agentic work, and pair high effort with a large max_tokens.
  • Sampling controls are managed for you. Opus 4.8 rejects temperature, top_p, and top_k at the model level; promptfoo omits them automatically (don't set them in config).

Running the Example

bash
# Set your API key
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

# Run the evaluation
npx promptfoo@latest eval

# View results
npx promptfoo@latest view

Other providers

Opus 4.8 is also reachable through:

  • AWS Bedrock — bedrock:us.anthropic.claude-opus-4-8 (or bedrock:converse:us.anthropic.claude-opus-4-8)
  • Google Vertex — vertex:claude-opus-4-8 with config.region: global
  • Azure AI Foundry — point anthropic:messages:claude-opus-4-8 at https://<resource>.services.ai.azure.com/anthropic via apiBaseUrl

Across all four providers, promptfoo automatically omits the unsupported sampling parameters (temperature, top_p, top_k) for Opus 4.8. The Anthropic Messages provider also logs a one-time warning if you set them explicitly; the Bedrock, Vertex, and Azure paths omit them silently.

Learn More