Anthropic advises Claude Opus 5.5 users to update their prompting habits
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On November 15, 2026, The Decoder reported that Anthropic released a prompting guide for Claude Opus 5.5. The guide notes that prompting habits carried over from older model generations are slowing down the new model, and suggests adjustments. One core recommendation is to remove phrases like "think hard": because Claude Opus 5.5 automatically performs reasoning and adjusts its reasoning depth based on the task and the tier being used, removing such phrases results in faster responses with no loss in quality. This is the first report on the event, with no further developments yet.
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- The DecoderAnthropic says outdated prompting habits are slowing down Claude Opus 5.5
Anthropic released prompting recommendations for Claude Opus 5.5, saying old habits are slowing the new model. It advises removing phrases like "think hard", since the model automatically reasons and adjusts depth based on the task and tier; removing them yields faster responses with no drop in quality.
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