No hype Claude Opus 4.8 review—my real experience

I got a few hours of early-access testing with Anthropic’s newly released model Opus 4.8. I walk through real coding, design, and strategy tasks across Claude Code and Claude Cowork, and give you my unfiltered view on what impressed me and what didn’t. *What you’ll learn:* 1. Where Opus 4.8 excels: greenfield prototypes, one-shot features, and fast execution 2. Where it struggles: the last 10%, edge cases in existing codebases, and hallucinations 3. How Opus 4.8 compares to Opus 4.7 on business strategy work 4. Why I’m still reaching for Opus 4.7 on data-heavy strategy and roadmap work 5. The new features shipping alongside the model: dynamic workflows with parallel subagents and effort control in Claude.ai and Cowork 6. The prompting and harness strategy I’d use to get the most out of it *In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Introduction to Opus 4.8 (00:44) Benchmark performance and pricing (01:53) First coding test: Building a prototyping tool (03:00) Where it failed: The last 10% problem (03:27) The hallucination problem (04:23) Testing Opus 4.8 on existing codebases (05:24) The ambition test: Building games for a 9-year-old (07:03) Business strategy test: 4.7 vs 4.8 (08:23) The roadmap test (09:17) Final verdict *References:* • System Card: Claude Opus 4.8: https://cdn.sanity.io/files/4zrzovbb/website/c886650a2e96fc0925c805a1a7ca77314ccbf4a6.pdf • Introducing Claude Opus 4.8 on X: https://x.com/claudeai/status/2060042702150930686?s=20 *Where to find Claire Vo:* ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/ Website: https://clairevo.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/ X: https://x.com/clairevo _Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._ _For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email jordan@penname.co._

Claire Vohost

May 28, 202613mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: May 28, 2026
Duration: 13m
Channel: How I AI
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

I got a few hours of early-access testing with Anthropic’s newly released model Opus 4.8. I walk through real coding, design, and strategy tasks across Claude Code and Claude Cowork, and give you my unfiltered view on what impressed me and what didn’t. *What you’ll learn:*
Where Opus 4.8 excels: greenfield prototypes, one-shot features, and fast execution
Where it struggles: the last 10%, edge cases in existing codebases, and hallucinations
How Opus 4.8 compares to Opus 4.7 on business strategy work
Why I’m still reaching for Opus 4.7 on data-heavy strategy and roadmap work
The new features shipping alongside the model: dynamic workflows with parallel subagents and effort control in Claude.ai and Cowork
The prompting and harness strategy I’d use to get the most out of it
*In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Introduction to Opus 4.8 (00:44) Benchmark performance and pricing (01:53) First coding test: Building a prototyping tool (03:00) Where it failed: The last 10% problem (03:27) The hallucination problem (04:23) Testing Opus 4.8 on existing codebases (05:24) The ambition test: Building games for a 9-year-old (07:03) Business strategy test: 4.7 vs 4.8 (08:23) The roadmap test (09:17) Final verdict *References:*
System Card: Claude Opus 4.8: https://cdn.sanity.io/files/4zrzovbb/website/c886650a2e96fc0925c805a1a7ca77314ccbf4a6.pdf
Introducing Claude Opus 4.8 on X: https://x.com/claudeai/status/2060042702150930686?s=20
*Where to find Claire Vo:* ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/ Website: https://clairevo.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/ X: https://x.com/clairevo _Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._ _For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email jordan@penname.co._

SPEAKERS

Claire Vo
host
Product leader and AI-focused creator/host of the How I AI show.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of How I AI, featuring Claire Vo, No hype Claude Opus 4.8 review—my real experience explores hands-on Opus 4.8 review: strong one-shots, weak edge reliability Opus 4.8 impressed in a greenfield, one-shot build by planning and shipping a working prototype that matched requested architecture.

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