Claude Opus 5 Boosts Coding Speed but Risks Confident Errors

Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 completes coding tasks faster than Opus 4.8 but may confidently report fixes that aren't actually applied. The author recommends starting with medium reasoning effort, verifying outcomes rather than explanations, and controlling scope to avoid unnecessary complexity. The model excels at multi-step investigation but requires rigorous verification to catch polished but incorrect results.