Robert Ta demonstrates three practices for Opus 5.5: hand over full tasks with clear endpoints, use side-query commands to ask follow-ups without interrupting, and embed steering rules in a Cloud MD file to pause before destructive actions. Opus 5.5 has cheaper tokens, faster cache reads, and higher agency than its predecessor.
If you're an AI builder and you're looking at Opus 5.5, try these in your first session. Hand over a whole task, define done and when to check in. This is from Claude devs themselves. Number 2, drop think carefully. It always thinks first, so don't worry about that. You don't got to prod along anymore. After a long run, check what it needs to go further. And here's their playbook. 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 the cloud apps and cloud code. So as I said, try those 3 things first, how to ask things. So say what done looks like, then let it run. Why does this matter on Opus 5.5? It keeps going on long multi-part work better than Opus 5 did. So the best gains are from you just defining done. Here's a way that you could, you could do that. Say what done looks like. The whole task might be migrate the payment endpoints from the old client to the new one. The finish line done means every endpoint uses new client, old client is deleted, and test suite passes. When to stop and ask only if a test fails or a reason you can't explain. So that might be your whole steering for that case. Adding to a running task. If you remember something mid-run, you could type a follow-up while it works. And runs are longer now and restart may cost more because of it. So just type follow-ups in Claude code and press enter while it works. Another thing that I find useful that I'll just demo live right now is for anybody using Claude Code out there, let's say it's like going, if you want to ask it a question, but not interrupt its flow of work, you could use this /btw. Hey, by the way, how many videos have we created? And then it'll actually do a little side thing without interrupting the main agent flow and give you this. Slash, by the way, response. So 15 videos, number 00 to 14. Yeah. So, and if you're an AI builder and you're using Claude Code and you typed in this, you yeeted some long prompt or command into the void, and then it's spending tokens, you don't want to interrupt its, maybe its goal loop or its cycle that you have it on to improve whatever or build whatever. And, but you do want to ask that rich context something. You could do /bt-dubs. Give that a shot. I thought that was a good little pro tip. So steering a long run in Cloud Code, what to do? Put a short rule in your Cloud MD file about when to stop and ask and when to keep going. So you need to be proactive and tell it when to stop when you want it to. This is an example. When a step doesn't need my input, keep going. Put status notes in the same message as your next action. Stop and ask only when you can't continue without me or before anything destructive, deleting data, force pushing, anything outside this repository. Jonathan, I'm actually curious from your CTO perspective, like thoughts on steering long runs in your experience using Claude Code or Codex?
Yeah, I was just looking at that in the documentation. I'd say historically that Codex responds a lot better to steering. And like, in fact, I think it's the intended way to use the model, whereas like often trying to steer Claude Code has tripped it up and like, you know, kind of it hiccups as how it feels. So I haven't tried it much with Opus 5.5 yet. Um, I've been, I like the input instructions, tell it what done is and tell it like when to stop. I've been experimenting a little bit more on that side of things, but the steering is something that I think they have some new features for and I want to check it out.
Yeah. Super cool. I also agree with you in Codex. You literally could type a thing and it goes into the queue and you could click steer and then it steers it. It like injects that prompt mid-session to the agent. I don't know how they do that, but it feels great and it works really well. At least based on my own qualitative experience. Yeah. And we could just see a quick glance here for all the AI builders looking at Opus 5.5 versus Opus 5. Input tokens cheaper, output tokens cheaper, cache read faster. So cheaper, better, faster. What more could you ask for? And it seems to have higher agency. It's not telling me it can't do things. The last model, Opus 5, I always had to remind it, actually, dude, you could look at 1Password and pull this API key to do this thing. Actually, dude, you can totally go and use browser automation. Your creators created you and they had that in mind and it's a capability. There were so many things I had to do about that. So yeah, go give it a try, as Jonathan said, and don't take our word for it. Try Opus 5.5 and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
