Anthropic's Opus 4.7 ships with a new xhigh effort tier slotted between high and max, giving developers a finer dial for how hard the model tries on difficult tasks.

It sounds like a minor update until you realize the product question it answers: how much thinking should this thing do, and who gets to decide?

The hype version is a frontier model with a literal turbo switch for hard thinking. The sober version is that every level up costs more tokens and time.

Watch whether effort controls stay a developer setting or start appearing as visible options in consumer products -- because that would mean something real changed.

* Reported facts should be source-backed. Hype commentary is editorial.