Getting the most out of Opus 5.5 in Claude and Claude Code

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How to prompt Opus 5.5, steer a long run, and check your results in Claude apps and Claude Code.

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Playbooks Getting the most out of Opus 5.5 in Claude and Claude Code How to prompt Opus 5.5, steer a long run, and check your results in Claude apps and Claude Code.

Opus 5.5 works well with the way you already use Claude. A few things behave differently, though: it works for longer on its own, it tells you plainly what it did, and it thinks before every reply. This guide covers how to work with Opus 5.5 in Claude apps and Claude Code, including how to prompt the model, steer a long run, and check your results.

What to do. Give the whole task in one message. Name the finish line, like “the tests pass” or “every endpoint is migrated.” Then let it cook.

Why it matters on Opus 5.5. Opus 5.5 keeps going on long, multi-part work better than Opus 5 did. Compared to prior Opus models, its biggest gains are on multi-step work, like carrying a change through a large repository until the tests pass. Early testers had it run long coding tasks for hours with little oversight. With a clear finish line, it knows when it’s done.

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